Promote academics for trials completed, data shared and findings replicated
Universities and cancer centres would change how they promote scientists, giving credit for finishing trials, sharing data, replicating others' work and publishing failures, not just for papers in famous journals.
Cancer centres and medical schools adopt narrative CVs and explicit promotion criteria that credit trial completion and reporting, data and code deposition, registered reports, replication studies, tool and model contributions and patient-facing outputs, while discounting journal impact factor (per the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment). Funders reinforce this by requiring the same formats in applications. The current system rewards novel positive findings in high-impact journals, which is precisely the incentive structure that produces irreproducible preclinical cancer biology and unpublished trials.
- Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains · The system pays the same for a drug that adds two months as for a cure, so companies race to copy rather than to cure.
- Preclinical results do not reproduce · Fewer than half of landmark cancer biology findings reproduce when someone else tries.
- Failures are hidden · Negative trials, failed drugs and abandoned programmes are rarely published, so the same mistakes are repeated.
Pages like this
not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaJudge funding programme officers on burden alignment and trials completed
Shares Pay investigators for finishing and publishing trials, not for enrolling patients, Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains.
- IdeaA global ledger of negative results and failed compounds with mandatory deposition
Shares Preclinical results do not reproduce, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaPre-registration and results reporting for real-world cancer studies
Shares Preclinical results do not reproduce, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaCount replications and open data in hiring and promotion
Shares Preclinical results do not reproduce, Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains.
- IdeaListed companies must disclose top-line data, not just 'did not meet endpoint'
Shares Failures are hidden, Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains.
- IdeaA home for the animal and organoid experiments that failed
Shares Preclinical results do not reproduce, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaPre-register animal efficacy studies like clinical trials
Shares Preclinical results do not reproduce, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaLiving systematic reviews of animal and organoid evidence before every new trial
Shares Preclinical results do not reproduce, Failures are hidden.