OnCo
ideasIdea

Top journals require an independent lab to reproduce key findings before publication

For the biggest claims, journals would require that a second, independent laboratory repeated the central experiment before the paper is accepted.

Some fields (particle physics with independent detectors, genome-wide association studies with replication cohorts) require independent confirmation as a condition of publication. Cancer biology does not. Top journals could require, for papers whose central claim is a therapeutic effect in a model system, that an independent lab (declared, without shared authorship interests) reproduce the key experiment, with the replication reported in the paper.

Hypothesis
Papers published under the rule will replicate in subsequent independent studies at more than twice the rate of comparable papers published without it.
Rationale
Genome-wide association studies were plagued by false positives until replication cohorts became mandatory, after which findings became highly reliable.
What would test it
One high-impact journal adopts the rule for therapeutic claims; track replication outcomes of the first 50 papers against matched papers elsewhere.
Maturity
speculative
Who has to act
policy
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
3
Bottlenecks it attacks

Connected

3top

Pages like this

not linked directly; found by shared links

ideas

2
Independent replication of the key experiment before first-in-human academic trialsMulti-laboratory preclinical trials as the standard for go/no-go decisions

bottlenecks

1
Preclinical results do not reproduce