ArticleeLife2021
Is preclinical research in cancer biology reproducible enough?
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Enhancing translational research in metastatic cancer through an open science environment: the UPTIDER experience.NPJ precision oncology · 2025Article
- Establishment and characterization of preclinical model of primary ovarian squamous cell carcinoma.Human cell · 2025Article
- Supporting evidence in phase 2 cancer trial protocols: a content analysis.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2025Article
- Artificial intelligence for response prediction and personalisation in radiation oncology.Strahlentherapie und Onkologie : Organ der Deutschen Rontgengesellschaft ... [et al] · 2025Review
- "Lost in translation?" Animal research in the era of precision medicine.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Review
- "Lost in translation?" Animal research in the era of precision medicine.Journal of translational medicine · 2025Review
- Article
- Multiple deadlocks in the development of nonprofit drugs.Drug discovery today · 2022Article
- What have we learned?eLife · 2021Article
- Individualized therapy trials: navigating patient care, research goals and ethics.Nature medicine · 2021Review
- A machine learning-assisted systematic review of preclinical glioma modeling: Is practice changing with the times?Neuro-oncology advancesArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology (RPCB) was established to provide evidence about reproducibility in basic and preclinical cancer research, and to identify the factors that influence reproducibility more generally. In this commentary we address some of the scientific, ethical and policy implications of the project. We liken the basic and preclinical cancer research enterprise to a vast 'diagnostic machine' that is used to determine which clinical hypotheses should be advanced for further development, including clinical trials. The results of the RPCB suggest that this diagnostic machine currently recommends advancing many findings that are not reproducible. While concerning, we believe that more work needs to be done to evaluate the performance of the diagnostic machine. Specifically, we believe three questions remain unanswered: how often does the diagnostic machine correctly recommend against advancing real effects to clinical testing?; what are the relative costs to society of false positive and false negatives?; and how well do scientists and others interpret the outputs of the machine?
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.