Does a ‘publish or perish’ ethos affect the ethical reporting of research?
Several publications in recent years have suggested that published scientific findings can be reproduced only 11% to 45% of the time. A study published in Clinical Cancer Research anonymously surveyed trainees involved in bench research about the issues surrounding career development, research practice, integrity and transparency.
“The study indicates that trainees believe that the pressure to publish affects honest reporting, mostly emanating from our system of rewards and advancement. The publication process itself affects faculty and trainees and appears to influence a shift in their ethics from honest reporting (“negative data”) to selective reporting, data falsification, or even fabrication.” Read the study
Europe PMC indexes preprints
From July 2018, the Europe PMC repository will start indexing preprints. In a blog post, Europe PMC say that making preprints discoverable through the repository will make the science reported in preprints more widely discoverable and support their inclusion into workflows such as grant reporting, article citing and credit and attribution.
Europe PMC is a repository for life science literature, based at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). Read more here
Researchers suggest new treatment for rare inherited cancers
Studying two rare inherited cancer syndromes, Yale Cancer Center (YCC) scientists have found the cancers are driven by a breakdown in how cells repair their DNA.
The discovery, published in Nature Genetics, suggests a promising strategy for treatment with drugs recently approved for other forms of cancer, said the researchers.
