Irreproducible biomedical research funded at $28 billion a year

Science : Half the money spent in the US on biomedical research goes to preclinical studies that are not reproducible, according to a recent paper published in PLOS Biology. Leonard Freedman of the nonprofit Global Biological Standards Institute in Washington, DC, and economists Iain Cockburn and Timothy Simcoe of Boston University culled their data from about two dozen studies of flawed biomedical papers. They concluded that 53% of preclinical studies are irreproducible due to certain problems such as contaminated cell lines or poor study design. Because $56 billion is spent each year on such research, about $28 billion is being lost to flawed studies. The researchers say, however, that is no reason to cut funding. Rather, additional money is needed to fix the problem by providing better training for researchers. The study has been criticized for being “sensationalistic” and for drawing such a broad conclusion based on only a few previous studies.