REFORM: Science Research Needs an Overhaul.

Too often absolutely nothing happens after initial results of a study are published. No follow-up investigations ensue to replicate or expand on a discovery. No one uses the findings to build new technologies.

The problem is not just what happens after publication—scientists often have trouble choosing the right questions and properly designing studies to answer them. Too many neuroscience studies test too few subjects to arrive at firm conclusions. Researchers publish reports on hundreds of treatments for diseases that work in animal models but not in humans. Drug companies find themselves unable to reproduce promising drug targets published by the best academic institutions. The growing recognition that something has gone awry in the laboratory has led to calls for, as one might guess, more research on research (aka, meta-research)—attempts to find protocols that ensure that peer-reviewed studies are, in fact, valid.

It will take a concerted effort by scientists and other stakeholders to fix this problem. We need to identify and correct system-level flaws that too often lead us astray. This is exactly the goal of a new center I co-founded at Stanford University earlier this year: the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), which will seek to study research practices and how these can be optimized.