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Re:Just 11% of 53 cancer research papers were reproducible by Retric on Thursday May 09, 2013 @10:19AM (#5680538)
If 11% of the papers are reproducible and people are trying to reproduce the results then your still making progress. Just the slow and expencive kind. Considering how complex the subject matter is I don's think it's reasonable to expect anything else.

The problem is people are not trying to reproduce results which harms the field and slows everything down.

Re:Just 11% of 53 cancer research papers were reproducible by spikels on Thursday May 09, 2013 @02:39PM (#5682194)
Actually very few people are trying to reproduce results. It is a lose-lose situation. Either you confirm the previous results which won't get published or you can't confirm them which means you are either not as competent as the original researcher or you have to embarrass your colleague and bring shame on your profession. Neither of which gets you published or helps you career or gets you more funding. The incentives are all screwed up.

These Amgen researcher had to sign agreements that they would not publish the results of their attempts to reproduce these experiments before they could get enough detail to attempt to reproduce them. Clearly this is not how science is supposed to work but it is exactly how businesses operate. Very sad.