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Meta-Research Center at Stanford (METRICS), School of Medicine initiative

Stanford's Attempt At Improving Research Accuracy



The Meta-Research Center at Stanford (METRICS), a new School of Medicine initiative that will focus on finding and communicating empirical recommendations to help improve the validity of medical and broader scientific research was launched in April 2014. The centers co-directors are Professors Steven Goodman and John Ioannidis.

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According to Steven Goodman, scientists at different institutions have sought to determine methods for conducting more accurate research for many years. He explained that the center will play an important role in bringing research together. (1) The centers other director, John Ioannidis, is well known for his advocacy in examining the biases and reproducibility of published science. In 2005, Ioannidis reported that one-third of studies published in three reputable peer reviewed journals didn't hold up. He looked at 45 studies published between 1990 and 2003 and found that subsequent research contradicted the results of seven of those studies, and another seven were found to have weaker results than originally published. In other words, 32% did not withstand the test of time. (2) This translates into a lot of medical misinformation. Ioannidis reviewed prestigious journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and Lancet, along with a number of others. Each article had been cited at least 1,000 times, all with in a span of 13 years. These results are worse than it sounds. Ioannidis had been examining only the less than one-tenth of one percent of published medical research that makes it to the most prestigious journals. Throw in the presumably less careful work from lesser journals, and take into account the way the results end up being spun and misinterpreted by university and industrial PR departments and it's clear that whatever it was about the wrongness that Ioannidis had found in these journals, the wrongness rate would only worsen from there, notes David Freedman. (3)

The Institute of Medicine estimates that only 4 percent of treatments and tests are backed up by strong scientific evidence

Others have reported similar results. The Institute of Medicine estimates that only 4 percent of treatments and tests are backed up by strong scientific evidence; more than half have very weak evidence or none. (4) Researchers at Spain's University of Girona went back over the data from forty-four papers from the British Medical Journal and Nature Magazine, and found statistical errors in a quarter of the British Medical Journal papers and in 38 percent of the Nature papers. (3) A recent series of empirical evaluations suggests that 85 percent of biomedical research efforts are wasted. (5) With over 15 million publishing scientists nowadays and millions of papers published every year, the work to be undertaken by the new center is a data-rich, fertile discipline that is much needed. It offers plenty of opportunities to conduct experiments, such as randomized studies where new research practices can be compared head-to-head against established ones in controlled settings. This is a much needed field of endeavor and the new METRICS center will have plenty of challenges. References
  1. Ali Gali, "Stanford launches new center for focusing on improving research accuracy," stanforddaily.com, April 22, 2014
  2. John P. Ioannidis, "Contradicted and initially stronger effects in highly cited clinical research," JAMA 292(2), 218, July 2005
  3. David H. Freedman, Wrong, (New York, Little Brown & Company, 2010), 64
  4. Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated, (New York, Bloomsbury, 2007), 92
  5. John P. Ioannidis, "Not all science is created equal,"Chemistry World, October 16, 2014


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Jack Dini -- Bio and Archives

Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology.  He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.


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