That assessment does not match up with what any practicing scientist thinks is even within the realm of possibility for harm to science.
Reading these conversations is like listening to C-suite execs at big companies talk about what employees are getting away with via work at home policies.
So, yes, the current situation can safely be assumed to pose at least a 25% cost on science. And "productivity" is the wrong term here. The harm of fraudulent/bad science runs much deeper than productivity
However, it did not have methods, it didn't say how they were not reproducible, as in a figure or an effect etc.
The closest thing to a definition of "reproducible" was a footnote on a table defining it as "sufficient to drive a drug development program," which is not at all the same thing as reproducible.
Which is to say, I'm skeptical of these anecdotes.
And if you've only ever encountered a single opinion piece on the reproducibility problem in biology/pre-clinical research, then I highly recommend you do a targeted keyword search.
> then I highly recommend you do a targeted keyword search.
There's no reason to be insulting, especially when linking to well known studies.
And I am intimately familiar with what researchers “get away with’ while ‘working at home’. As a researcher who tried to reproduce several research papers only to discover the original scientists were wildly exaggerating their claims or cleverly disguising fundamental shortcomings, I can assure the cost is quite high to the scientific community, well in excess of 25% of the annual $48B NIH budget.
I hold a healthy disdain for my fellow scientists. The only way to get them to play by the rules in my view is to have a threat of a research audit hanging over them.
For example, the NIH could identify the top findings from 2024 that need to be reproduced, and seek expressions of interest to reproduce these and/or other important findings identified by applicants. Perhaps, also reach an agreement with top journals to publish replications as a new article type, and link them to the original one, just like they do with comments/news & views.
It would instantly make those publishing super edgy findings much more careful, just in case, and things would become more efficient.
Currently, academic publications are in a bit of market for lemons situation [1], where the seller (authors) have much more information than the buyers (readers, funders).
Time to change that.
wdym? You're on the happy path when reproducing, the cost of the original study includes all the failed attempts.
Yes and yes. I'm 6 years past defending my PhD and I have low confidence in being able to reproduce results from papers in my field (computational biophysics).
I was recently at an industry-heavy biophysics conference that ran a speed dating event, and my conversation starter was "what fraction of papers in our field do you trust?". I probably talked to ~20 people, with a median response of ~25%.
Even a tiny amount invested in reproduction studies and accountability would go a long way. Most papers in _computational_ biophysics still don't publish usable code and data.
If this happens before founders/early investors aren't the ones left without a chair when the music stops, it doesn't matter
See: Theranos.
Typically, most companies are answerable to the investors and shareholders. Customers usually don't figure in the equation.