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Animal Ethics Biosafety Human Research Ethics Research Integrity

Against Research Waste – How the Evidence-Based Research paradigm promotes more ethical and innovative research – London School of Economics (Caroline Blaine, et al | February 2021)

Posted by Dr Gary Allen in Research Integrity on February 28, 2021
Keywords: Journal, Peer review, Publication ethics, Research integrity, Research results

The Linked Original Item was Posted On February 4, 2021

A hand dropping shredded paper

With notable negative impacts in clinical research, large numbers of studies simply replicate findings that have previously been confirmed. Caroline Blaine, Klara Brunnhuber and Hans Lund, suggest that much of this waste could be averted with a more structured and careful approach to systematic reviews and propose Evidence-Based Research as a framework for achieving this.

We would argue that we need a more structured and careful approach to systematic reviews so that we can stop wasting research resources on clinical research, where the evidence already exists to reach a definitive conclusion.  We have included links to six great related items.

Meta-research (research on research) has shown that many unnecessary studies could have been avoided, if a systematic review had been conducted during the planning phase to flag that no new research was needed. Failing to base new scientific studies on earlier results, especially in medical research, exposes participants to unnecessary research. This is not just wasteful, but is unethical, potentially harmful and limits funding for important and relevant research.

Cumulative meta-analysis, in which studies are added in order of publication date to show the overall result as each new study contributes to the knowledge base, is a research tool that can be used to demonstrate when confirmatory studies are no longer required. These cumulative meta-analyses have over time shown the same picture of waste in many cases. For example:

  • In 1992 Lau et al. published a cumulative meta-analysis showing by 1977 enough studies had been conducted to conclude that intravenous streptokinase preserves left ventricular function in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Nevertheless, from 1977 to 1988 more than 30,000 patients were involved in unnecessary placebo-controlled randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of intravenous streptokinase.

Read the rest of this discussion piece

 

Related Reading

Why Professors Are Writing Crap That Nobody Reads – NewsIn Asia (Editor | July 2020)

How Academic Science Gave Its Soul to the Publishing Industry – Issues in Science and Technology (Mark Neff | January 2020)

Australia ‘There is a problem’: Australia’s top scientist Alan Finkel pushes to eradicate bad science – The Conversation (Alan Finkel | September 2019)

SPEECH: Actions to advance research integrity – Dr Alan Finkel AO (6th World Conference on Research Integrity | June 2019)

To move research from quantity to quality, go beyond good intentions – Nature ( Alan Finkel | February 2019)

Science isn’t broken, but we can do better: here’s how – The Conversation (Alan Finkel | April 2018)

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