Puzzo Daniela, Conti Fiorenzo
Department Biomedical and Biotechnological Sciences, University of Catania, Catania, Italy.
Oasi Research Institute-IRCCS, Troina, Italy.
Front Mol Neurosci. 2021 Jun 15;14:684977. doi: 10.3389/fnmol.2021.684977. eCollection 2021.
The main goal of scientific research is to uncover new knowledge to understand reality. In the field of life sciences, the aim of translational research-to transfer results "from bench to bedside"-has to contend with the problem that the knowledge acquired at the "bench" is often not reproducible at the "bedside," raising the question whether scientific discoveries truly mirror the real world. As a result, researchers constantly struggle to overcome the dichotomy between methodological problems and expectations, as funding agencies and industries demand expandable and quick results whereas patients, who are uninterested in the epistemological dispute, only ask for an effective cure. Despite the numerous attempts made to address reproducibility and reliability issues, some essential pitfalls of scientific investigations are often overlooked. Here, we discuss some limitations of the conventional scientific method and how researcher cognitive bias and conceptual errors have the potential to steer an experimental study away from the search for the of a phenomenon. As an example, we focus on Alzheimer's disease research and on some problems that may have undermined most of the clinical trials conducted to investigate it.
科学研究的主要目标是揭示新知识以理解现实。在生命科学领域，转化研究的目标——将研究结果“从实验室转化到临床应用”——不得不应对这样一个问题：在“实验室”获得的知识往往在“临床”无法重现，这就引发了一个问题，即科学发现是否真的反映了现实世界。因此，研究人员不断努力克服方法问题与期望之间的二分法，因为资助机构和行业要求可扩展且快速的结果，而对认识论争议不感兴趣的患者只要求有效治疗。尽管为解决可重复性和可靠性问题进行了无数尝试，但科学研究中的一些基本陷阱常常被忽视。在这里，我们讨论传统科学方法的一些局限性，以及研究人员的认知偏差和概念错误如何有可能使实验研究偏离对现象本质的探索。例如，我们聚焦于阿尔茨海默病研究以及一些可能破坏了大多数用于研究该病的临床试验的问题。
