Simon
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Offline: What is medicine's 5 sigma? - The Lancet
A recent editorial from The Lancet, reporting on a meeting of the big scientific cheeses including the Wellcome Trust, the MRC and journal editors about the crisis in life science research standards.“A lot of what is published is incorrect.” I'm not allowed to say who made this remark because we were asked to observe Chatham House rules....
The piece says on of the best contributions came from Tony Weidberg, a professor in particle physics who said the particle physics community responded to a similar crisis over quality in reproducibility in the past by focusing on research standards. In particular, they introduced the '5 sigma' test for significance, which translates to a p value of <=0.0000003, as opposed to the p<0.05 used regularly in life science. That's a lot harder to achieve. [this may not be right for life science, but it does give a feel for the lengths they went to in particle physics]
The conclusion of the symposium was that something must be done... But as to precisely what to do or how to do it, there were no firm answers. Those who have the power to act seem to think somebody else should act first. And every positive action (eg, funding well-powered replications) has a counterargument (science will become less creative). The good news is that science is beginning to take some of its worst failings very seriously. The bad news is that nobody is ready to take the first step to clean up the system.
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