Short answer:
Solutions start from accurately identifying the problem. Fact is
biomedical research has plenty of innovation 'on paper'. The feeling it
isn't enough arises from a bottleneck because most breakthroughs aren't
reproducible and hence fail to translate to the clinic. Once we accept
the problem is lack of reproducibility rather than breakthroughs per se, we can more accurately envision remedies.
With
top weekly science journals like Nature and Science expanding their
specialist journal base at breakneck pace, weekly issues filled with
breakthrough scientific discoveries, clearly the problem isn't
insufficiency. Rather there's too much done the wrong way. Who sifts
gold from dross to determine which breakthrough's reliable? So far no
one. That leaves data irreproducibility to unfold slowly years down the
road, like a disaster movie in slow motion.
Publications the lifeblood for a successful academic career, how often do journals publish papers with negative data
asserting breakthroughs weren't reproducible? Question's rhetorical
because the answer is almost never. Why would they when scientists
submitting the papers and those reviewing them pro bono, both are
fully invested in the novelty model which rewards their careers? Is it
reasonable journals all the way from Nature/Science to specialist
journals uniformly impose the mandate of novelty? In fact, all three,
universities, journals and government operate a novelty-mandating
ecosystem that can only change if they give reproducibility some parity.
No
doubt such a preposterous idea could invite howls of derision. After
all, with generations of scientists trained to go for guts and glory at
all costs, who in their right mind would devote their scientific career
to re-doing others' work? Seems an intractable problem except it isn't
really so. For far too many years at a stretch, universities have been
graduating far more biomedical researchers than can be absorbed by
academia and industry. Forced into one post-doc after another, a large
mass of highly trained scientists is looking for meaningful work beyond
the tedium and indignity of being merely trained hands. The worthwhile
goal of helping clean-up biomedical research might be just their ticket.
With a sprinkling of high-profile reproducibility studies, Nature,
Science and their ilk could continue to focus on novelty, providing the
fodder for reproducibility studies in specialist journals. This would
create a mutually reinforcing virtuous cycle that fuels reproducible
breakthroughs that successfully translate to the clinic. Frustrated
perception of not enough breakthroughs would start to fade. Biomedical
research would also gain back its reputation for probity.
Bonus idea:
Perhaps uniquely so, in one stroke the US has the opportunity to make
this happen another way as well. The NIH, the largest government funder
of US biomedical research, splits its budget two ways, 90% for funding
external research, so-called extramural and 10% for funding its own
internal research. The so-called intramural is purely
play-in-a-sandbox-for-lif e type of funding for thousands of
full-time NIH intramural researchers. Set up to do the kind of esoteric,
high-risk science it was thought tenured university researchers just
wouldn't undertake, clearly decades later, the system doesn't work the
way it was envisaged. Instead, it's more of the same. However, it
represents a net opportunity. Simply switch the NIH intramural mandate
from breakthrough to reproducibility. The budget, workforce and
infrastructure are all there. Secure lifetime funding attracted
precisely those who value stable job security and generous benefits,
exactly the workforce needed for diligent reproduction, for sifting gold
from dross from among the breakneck-paced breakthroughs.
https://www.quora.com/What-do-universities-journals-and-government-need-to-do-to-stimulate-breakthrough-scientific-discovery/answer/Tirumalai-Kamala
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