ArticleeLife2021
Challenges for assessing replicability in preclinical cancer biology.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 132 papers, 6 of them syntheses 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
132 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Transcriptomic Profile of Glioblastoma Cells Infected with Zika Virus: A Systematic Review and Pathway Analysis.Viruses · 2026Pooled it
- Prevalence and predictors of data and code sharing in the medical and health sciences: systematic review with meta-analysis of individual participant data.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2023Pooled it
- Systematic literature review reveals suboptimal use of chemical probes in cell-based biomedical research.Nature communications · 2023Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Recommendations for robust and reproducible preclinical research in personalised medicine.BMC medicine · 2023Guideline
- Pooled it
- Patients might distrust honest doctors.Journal of hospital medicine · 2026Article
- Reproducibility in biomedical research.Nature medicine · 2026Review
- Multilaboratory, Blinded, Randomized Trial of Five Cerebroprotectants in Ischemic Stroke.Circulation research · 2026Article
- FairFlow: A transparency-first framework for verifiable and reproducible bioinformatics.Array (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Improving Scientific Research: Renegotiated Principles of Science, Proposals, Failures, and Successes.European journal of clinical investigation · 2026Review
- Opportunities and challenges for analytical chemists: organ-on-chip devices as new approach methods (NAMs) for identifying potential toxins.The Analyst · 2026Review
- Impact of regularization methods and outlier removal on unsupervised sample classification.BMC bioinformatics · 2026Article
- Widespread use of invalid statistical tests in biomedical machine learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A call for preregistration of in vitro research : Pregistration as a tool to improve reproducibility and transparency.EMBO reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Towards More Robust Nanobioscience: Launching the NanoBubbles Replication Initiative.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Reporting quality of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) methods in scientific publications.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Methods for randomized, blinded, controlled evaluation of putative disease interventions in multilaboratory, preclinical assessment networks.Lab animal · 2026Article
- Data sharing in acupuncture meta-analyses: Associations with journal policies and practical considerations.Integrative medicine research · 2026Article
72 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We conducted the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology to investigate the replicability of preclinical research in cancer biology. The initial aim of the project was to repeat 193 experiments from 53 high-impact papers, using an approach in which the experimental protocols and plans for data analysis had to be peer reviewed and accepted for publication before experimental work could begin. However, the various barriers and challenges we encountered while designing and conducting the experiments meant that we were only able to repeat 50 experiments from 23 papers. Here we report these barriers and challenges. First, many original papers failed to report key descriptive and inferential statistics: the data needed to compute effect sizes and conduct power analyses was publicly accessible for just 4 of 193 experiments. Moreover, despite contacting the authors of the original papers, we were unable to obtain these data for 68% of the experiments. Second, none of the 193 experiments were described in sufficient detail in the original paper to enable us to design protocols to repeat the experiments, so we had to seek clarifications from the original authors. While authors were
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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.