来源：《新科学家》
原文刊登日期：2021年12月7日
An eight-year-long investigation into the reliability of preclinical cancer biology research has found that fewer than half of the results published in 23 highly cited papers could be successfully reproduced.
一项为期8年的临床前癌症生物学研究的可靠性调查发现，在23篇高引论文的结果中，只有不到一半可以成功复制。
Tim Errington, director of research at the Center for Open Science in Virginia – which conducted the investigation – says the original plan was to reproduce 193 experiments from 53 papers. But, as explained in one of two studies the team published, this was reduced to 50 experiments from 23 papers.
弗吉尼亚开放科学中心组织了这项调查。其研究主任蒂姆·埃林顿说，最初的计划是从53篇论文中复制193个实验。但是，正如该团队发表的两项研究之一所解释的那样，后来减少到23篇论文50项实验。
“Just trying to understand what was done and reported in the papers in order to do it again was really hard. We couldn’t get access to the information,” he says.
他说：“仅仅试图了解论文上所做和报告的事情，以便再做一次都是非常困难的。我们无法获得相关信息”。
In total, the 50 experiments included 112 potentially replicable binary “success or failure” outcomes. However, as detailed in the second study, Errington and his colleagues could replicate the effects of only 51 of these – or 46 per cent.
总的来说，这50个实验包括112个潜在可复制的二元“成功或失败”结果。然而，正如在第二项研究中详述的那样，埃林顿和他的同事们只能复制其中51个实验的效果，也就是说，结果复现率为46%。
The experiments were all in-tube or animal-based preclinical cancer biology studies. They were from papers published between 2010 and 2012 and were selected because they were all “high-impact” studies that had been read and heavily cited by other researchers. The results are “a bit eye-opening”, says Errington.
这些实验都是在试管中或基于动物的临床前癌症生物学研究。它们来自于2010年至2012年间发表的论文，之所以被选中，是因为它们都是被其他研究人员阅读并大量引用的“高影响力”研究。结果“有点让人大开眼界”，埃林顿说。
The investigation’s findings do, however, align with those of earlier reports published by the big pharmaceutical companies Bayer and Amgen. C. Glenn Begley was a senior cancer biologist at Amgen and an author of its report, which was published in 2012. “We looked back at the papers that we had relied upon at Amgen and found that we could only reproduce 11 per cent of the studies,” says Begley.
然而，这项调查的结果与大型制药公司拜耳(Bayer)和安进(Amgen)此前发表的报告一致。c·格伦·贝格利是安进公司(Amgen)的高级癌症生物学家，也是该公司2012年发表的报告的作者之一。贝格利说：“我们回顾了我们在安进所依赖的论文，发现我们只能重现11%的研究。”
The Center for Open Science is now advocating for a scientific culture change that places more focus on data sharing and good quality studies, which could help highlight any issues with replicability in this sort of research.
开放科学中心目前正在倡导一种科学文化变革，将更多的注意力放在数据共享和高质量的研究上，这可能有助于突出此类研究中的任何可复制性问题。
Emily Sena at the University of Edinburgh, UK, agrees this is important, but says more needs to be done to persuade scientists to get on board. “It requires institutions and their appointment panels and promotion panels to value the fact that you have done this, but the incentive structure just isn’t there at the moment,” she says.
英国爱丁堡大学的Sena同意数据共享很重要，但是她说需要做更多的工作来说服科学家们参与进来。她表示：“这要求学术机构及其任命小组和晋升小组重视你数据共享的事实，但目前还没有相应的激励机制。”
There are promising signs of change on the horizon. The US National Institutes of Health, one of the largest funders of health-related research, is instituting a new policy in early 2023 that will make data sharing the default for the projects it funds. Several journals have also changed their publishing systems in recent years to encourage data sharing.
前景看好的变化迹象正在出现。美国国立卫生研究院是健康相关研究的最大资助者之一，该机构将于2023年初制定一项新政策，该政策将使其资助的项目默认共享数据。近年来，一些期刊也改变了它们的出版系统，以鼓励数据共享。
Begley says he has seen a real change in the decade since he co-authored the Amgen report. “When I first started talking about this issue, people would get very angry and say, ‘Well, this just proves that Amgen scientists are incompetent’,” he says. “Now, when I give a talk, the focus is on what should we be doing about this.”
贝格利说，自从他与人合作撰写安进报告以来，十年来他看到了真正的变化。他说：“当我刚开始谈论这个问题时，人们会非常生气，说，‘好吧，这只是证明安进的科学家不称职’。现在，当我演讲时，重点是我们应该对此做些什么。”