Biomedical Division, The Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, FORTH-ITE, Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Laboratory of Biological Chemistry, Medical School, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece.
EMBO J. 2019 Feb 15;38(4). doi: 10.15252/embj.2018101011. Epub 2019 Jan 7.
Biomedical research has a reproducibility problem since various crucial landmark papers could not be independently reproduced. While there are many causes related to statistical analysis, methodology or insufficient reporting of experimental details, this commentary argues that the complexity of biological material itself is, until now, a largely ignored source of irreproducibility. By discussing examples from evolutionary biology, intrinsically disordered proteins and current biomedical research, it contends that some results are irreproducible because we do not have the knowledge, the tools or the analytical ability to understand biological complexity and how it can give rise to different results. Instead of casting irreproducible research out as bad or sloppy science, they should serve as an inspiration for pioneering research not just to develop such tools but also to attempt to explore what lies beneath our current inability to deal with complexity.
由于各种重要的里程碑式论文无法独立重现，生物医学研究存在可重复性问题。虽然存在许多与统计分析、方法或实验细节报告不足相关的原因，但本文认为，生物材料本身的复杂性迄今为止是一个很大程度上被忽视的不可重复性来源。通过讨论来自进化生物学、无序蛋白质和当前生物医学研究的例子，本文认为，一些结果不可重现是因为我们没有知识、工具或分析能力来理解生物复杂性以及它如何产生不同的结果。这些不可重现的研究不应被视为糟糕或草率的科学，而应成为开拓性研究的灵感来源，不仅要开发这些工具，还要尝试探索我们目前无法应对复杂性的背后原因。
