# Every cancer biology PhD begins with a funded replication of a published finding

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-phd-replication-year/  
OnCo record `idea-tr2-phd-replication-year` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Make the first project of every cancer biology doctoral student a funded, pre-registered attempt to repeat a published finding chosen from a curated list of translationally relevant results, with the outcome published in a replication registry. Students learn power analysis, blinding and reporting, and the field gets thousands of replications a year.

## Summary

First-year doctoral students need training projects with clear methods and a defined endpoint; replications provide exactly that, while teaching pre-registration, power analysis, blinding and reporting. Programmes that have tried this (in psychology) report strong educational outcomes. A cancer biology version, with findings chosen from a curated list of translationally important results and outcomes published in a replication registry, would create a steady replication workforce at marginal cost.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Participating programmes will publish at least one replication per student, and students will show measurably better methodological practice in subsequent thesis work than matched controls.
- Rationale: Training and replication are complementary: the student gains skills, the field gains evidence, and the incentive problem is sidestepped because the student is not competing for novelty.
- Proposed test: Pilot in five doctoral programmes for three cohorts; track replications published and assess later methodological quality.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: research

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Preclinical results do not reproduce): Errington et al., Investigating the replicability of preclinical cancer biology (eLife 2021): https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71601

## Connected records

- ideas: [A replication status badge on every cancer paper, visible in PubMed](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-replication-status-badge/), [Funders set aside a fixed share of budget for independent replication](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-replication-set-aside/)
- bottlenecks: [Not enough oncologists, nurses, pathologists, physicists](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-workforce/), [Preclinical results do not reproduce](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/)
- roadmaps: [Drug discovery roadmap: screening in mice → maps of dependency → designing in silico](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/drug-discovery-roadmap/)

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