Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

OT:

The 50% comment is a likely a major over-estimate. Are you saying the 50% figure in a particular small area, or as a general view. It also depends on what you mean by not being able to be reproduced.

I don't think it is a major over-estimate.

I'm saying you could look through 100 papers and find simple flaws in at least half of them that make the conclusions untenable.

For example:

1) Check the sheer number of Western blots that show small windows for the signal, and you can see that they've cut out the "nonspecific" signals. Well, if you speak with many of these people, the only reason the signal they chose is "specific" is because it is near the right size. That's demonstrable BS and goes on all over the place. Given the prevalence of this technique and people's refusal to validate the antibodies they use, that's a giant source of error that would invalidate many studies.

2) With advancing technology, researchers have the ability to use advanced techniques and/or very exploratory techniques. But few are well versed, so they use them incorrectly and in ways that are not viable. For example, many labs using flow cytometry will use antibodies against intracellular proteins in their separation... how can that be? And if you ask them, they just shrug and say "well, it separates cell populations so it must be working." This stuff is prevalent in a lot of "translational" research and it's clearly false data.

Those are just two simple examples, and I'm even omitting the plethora of proteomic and transcript analyses done without appropriate controls and without regard for the fundamentals behind the methods.

So yeah, I think the 50% number is reasonable.