Reproducibility: The science communities’ ticking timebomb. Can we still trust published research?

"In this blog post, we will consider the causes of this crisis, including a “publish or perish” culture that incentivizes bad practices, p-hacking, HARKing and other methods by which researchers can over-inflate positive results, as well as the lack of transparency, detail and accessibility that makes attempting to reproduce results impossible.

We will highlight cancer research and Alzheimer’s research as two fields which have had huge investments followed by huge failures, and how problems with reproducibility have contributed to these failures. We will also address how the emergence and development of new technologies such as AI and machine learning aren’t necessarily helping the problem; they may in fact be making matters worse. We also give voice to the other perspective, from those who think the “reproducibility crisis” is an exaggeration or a misnomer. We continue by outlining initiatives and projects designed to fix this crisis. Finally, we ask ourselves the question: How much of our current science is built on fundamental concepts and ideas that are flawed?..."