Avoidable waste in the production and reporting of research evidence
An opinion article from Iain Chalmers (of the very well regarded though not fully open access Cochrane Collaboration) and Paul Glasziou (of the Center for Evidence-based Medicine) discusses the high potential for waste in much research.
They list a number of barriers:
Poor engagement of end users of research in research questions and design
Incentives in fellowships and career paths to do primary research even if of low relevance
Poor training in research methods and research reporting
Lack of methodological input to research design and review of research
Incentives for primary research ignore the need to use and improve on existing research on the same question.
Published research fails to set the study in the context of all previous similar research
Non-registration of trials
Failure of sponsors and authors to submit full reports of completed research
Poor awareness and use by authors and editors of reporting guidelines
Many journal reviews focus on expert judgments about contribution to knowledge, rather than methods and usability
Space restrictions in journals prevent publication of details of interventions and tests
For each of these obstacles, the authors recommend one or more solutions.
They quote a medical researcher with myeloma in the introduction:
"“Research results should be easily accessible to people who need to make decisions about their own health… Why was I forced to make my decision knowing that information was somewhere but not available? Was the delay because the results were less exciting than expected? Or because in the evolving field of myeloma research there are now new exciting hypotheses (or drugs) to look at? How far can we tolerate the butterfly behaviour of researchers, moving on to the next flower well before the previous one has been fully exploited?”"
"This experience is not unusual: a recently updated systematic review of 79 follow-up studies of research reported in abstracts estimated the rate of publication of full reports after 9 years to be only 53%."
