Plan to replicate 50 high-impact cancer papers shrinks to just 18
Please don&#x27;t ignore this very important quote from the article:<p><i>&quot;In fact, many of the initial 50 papers have been confirmed by other groups, as some of the RP:CB’s critics have pointed out.&quot;</i><p>This article is staying assiduously neutral, but one perfectly valid interpretation is that <i>the original initiative was flawed</i> in a way that was predicted by the initiative&#x27;s critics. Science is <i>routinely</i> reproduced -- just not by labs working in isolation, using publications as clean-room instruction books. This is the sort of thing that <i>programmers</i> believe about science, not something that scientists believe themselves.<p>There are a great many serious, legitimate scientists who believe that this &quot;reproducibility crisis&quot; is verging on irrational, and it&#x27;s important to consider their arguments. It&#x27;s particularly scary to me that so many comments here are dovetailing with the sort of nonsense you encounter on anti-vax and global warming denial forums. We&#x27;re literally gaslighting the process that has done more to advance society than any other in human history:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pnas.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;115&#x2F;20&#x2F;5042" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pnas.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;115&#x2F;20&#x2F;5042</a><p><i>&quot;The discovery that an experiment does not replicate is not a lack of success but an opportunity. Many of the current concerns about reproducibility overlook the dynamic, iterative nature of the process of discovery where discordant results are essential to producing more integrated accounts and (eventually) translation. A failure to reproduce is only the first step in scientific inquiry. In many ways, how science responds to these failures is what determines whether it succeeds.&quot;</i>