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. 2014 Dec 10:3:e04333.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.04333.

An open investigation of the reproducibility of cancer biology research

Timothy M Errington  1 , Elizabeth Iorns  2 , William Gunn  3 , Fraser Elisabeth Tan  4 , Joelle Lomax  5 , Brian A Nosek  6
Affiliations

An open investigation of the reproducibility of cancer biology research

Timothy M Errington et al. Elife. .

Abstract

It is widely believed that research that builds upon previously published findings has reproduced the original work. However, it is rare for researchers to perform or publish direct replications of existing results. The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology is an open investigation of reproducibility in preclinical cancer biology research. We have identified 50 high impact cancer biology articles published in the period 2010-2012, and plan to replicate a subset of experimental results from each article. A Registered Report detailing the proposed experimental designs and protocols for each subset of experiments will be peer reviewed and published prior to data collection. The results of these experiments will then be published in a Replication Study. The resulting open methodology and dataset will provide evidence about the reproducibility of high-impact results, and an opportunity to identify predictors of reproducibility.

Keywords: human; human biology; medicine; methodology; mouse; open science; replication; reproducibility; reproducibility project: cancer biology.

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Conflict of interest statement

EI: Employed by and hold shares in Science Exchange Inc.

FET: Employed by and hold shares in Science Exchange Inc.

JL: Employed by and hold shares in Science Exchange Inc.

The other authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology will replicate selected experiments from a set of 50 research papers in an effort to estimate the rate of reproducibility in preclinical cancer biology research.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04333.002
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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