Cancer researchers are currently facing cancer studies trouble when only 2 out of 5 cancer studies were successfully replicated after rigorous replications efforts. Involving clinical trials on experimental treatments, researchers tackled five studies in which only two could be successfully repeated. One of the papers could not be replicated, while the remaining two were riddled with technical issues.
This finding have caused turmoil in the field of scientific research. Scientists are worried about the reproducibility of current cancer studies. But others say that it is the nature of a good study to be challenging in its duplication since biological elements are so diverse.
"These first five papers show there are layers of complexity here that make it hard to say that," Charles Sawyers, a cancer biologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City comments regarding the flippant comments of some people that science is not reproducible. According to the NPR, the recent cancer studies trouble do not to say that the original studies are incorrect.
However, the results of a review published on Thursday, are a serious reminder that science often neglects to meet one of its most basic requirements which is the reproducibility of findings. The fact that these cancer studies are often irreproducible have big health implications to the public. Many great ideas in curing cancer never pan out.
According to the Science Mag, one reason is that findings from the first studies fail to come out in the following ones. "Reproducibility is a central feature of how science is supposed to be," Brian Nosek, a psychologist and leader of this research at the Center for Open Science says. A few years ago, he conducted a similar study to examine the validity of research in his field.
His results got international attention when two-thirds of the original results in psychology couldn't be reproduced. This problem can cause a lot of issues in the field of cancer research. Scientists are consequently working to find ways to reduce cancer studies trouble.
