(Quick review: Many biomedical scientists are already aware of the content of this book, but for academics in other fields, industry professionals, doctors, or people who plan to donate money to biomedical research, I highly recommend it.)
Biomedical science is falling sway to the law of diminishing returns. These are no longer the days when new cures pop up out of nowhere during quick tests. Complex new technologies have opened up millions of new possibilities for discovering agents of disease or possible treatments, while creating countless new opportunities for failure in the process. In the 21st century, it is exponentially harder to find new drugs than it was in the 20th, and increasingly, young researchers around the world are feeling the grind.
Luckily, science has all the tools of the Enlightenment at its disposal to expose mistaken research and weed out bad methods. There are regular conferences, internal reviews, retractions, and impeccable science journalism at the journals Nature and Science especially. The more exuberant apologists for science will tell us that unlike religious prophecy, science gains from failed predictions. So, is there really a problem?
Richard Harris, NPR science reporter, argues in this book that yes, diminishing returns is creating real problems for science. This book reads like a long NPR story, so it would probably make a great audiobook, except that I wouldn't recommend listening to it in the car: some of Harris's findings would probably make you slam on the brakes. Despite the best intentions of hundreds of whistleblowers, and an institutional recognition that things need to change, much of the medical research funded by tax money and grieving parents is… well… a word that Harris refuses to put down on print.
On a structural level, the stakes are very high. A researcher might spend a decade working based on false assumptions, or become widely known in his field for a lauded finding that might not be exactly true. And there is no prize for discovering that a result is false. Researchers may take months or years failing to reproduce a result, with the only reward being the ability to grumble about it at next year’s conference. Scientists are human and there are always little problems at the interpersonal level, but when those problems are well-known to everyone and seem unavoidable, they become part of the structure of science itself.
The result is that there are a number of sacred cows that regularly spawn bad science, but which both academics and publishers have refused to abandon, resulting in the 70-90% rate of inaccuracy among published studies. The inexcusable becomes normal: there’s the overconfidence in mouse studies. There’s the sloppy use of cell lines, which is no longer tolerated in industry studies. There’s the infamous “p = 0.05” standard, which is well known by biostatisticians to be too loose, but which would slow biomedical publication to a near halt if it were abandoned. Researchers are evaluated on quantity of publications, rather than quality, during job interviews. Data sharing in biomedical science lags far behind other fields, due to intense competition for funding. Worst of all, research universities do not offer classes in methodology where problems like these might be discussed. Researchers trying to evaluate recent literature and get new results are forced to learn “on their feet,” either in the laboratory or at conferences.
This is now recognized as a crisis throughout the field. In 2015 a discussion was opened as to how things might be improved. Unfortunately, besides closer attention to detail at the top journals, there is no consensus about what can be done. The hypercompetitive environment that promotes false results and sloppy standards relies on the same psychological drive that causes good researchers to seek out hidden methodological problems. The most frightening question is, in the long run, can these problems actually be fixed? At a structural level, the law of diminishing returns (called Eroom’s Law in the book) means that research is going to get more and more expensive — the possibilities may still be exciting, but institutions are going to pour more and more cash to complete any given study, and the desire for positive results is going to be more, not less. The import of this is that all of us, doctors and laypeople alike, will need to be more and more skeptical of research findings as time goes on.
Although biomedical researchers may want to insist that this book is a compilation of challenges rather than fatal flaws, and that their research continues to save lives, any academic or journalist with a serious interest in the truth needs to read it, in order to understand how biological research in general operates today. When I, a humanities grad student, explained to my biomedical researcher friend the type of procedure that has been proposed by my colleagues for applying “cognitive science” to artistic behavior, he laughed out loud. When you know how modern science really works, and the vast number of pitfalls that might be hiding between the lines of any individual paper, the uses to which non-experts put your work can sound naive or even absurd. Harris is doing his duty as a journalist to put that variety of scientific intuition down in print.
Related books:
-
Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry - A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis
-
The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Flip to back Flip to front
Follow the Author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
| Price | New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
$0.00
| Free with your Audible trial | |
|
MP3 CD, Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged
"Please retry" | $13.02 | $3.50 |
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Top reviews from other countries
George Poirier
The Many Perils in Biomedical Research
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 20, 2017Jamil Azad
is easily overcome with a quick clicking of the mouse when ...
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 18, 2017
ALIEN
Analyse confuse et naïve des périls de la recherche médicale d'aujourd'hui
Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on May 26, 2017Carl van Walraven
One of the best books I have read this year
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 14, 2019
