The co-operative, multiplayer game “Pandemic” is won by ‘researchers’ and ‘scientists’ while the other players work to slow the spread ("flatten the curve" and "zero covid"), buying time for the researchers to develop and test effective vaccines and/or treatments for the four epidemic diseases. Designed in 2008 (after the SARS outbreak) the game is instructive … Continue reading It’s a research emergency! Lessons from the pandemic →

"Huge sums of money are spent annually on research that is seriously flawed through the use of inappropriate designs, unrepresentative samples, small samples, incorrect methods of analysis, and faulty interpretation." - Doug Altman, BMJ 1994 Doug Altman was a statistician in Oxford who spent much of his career trying to improve the quality of research. His … Continue reading Addressing the scandal of poor medical research →

What is the cost of the reproducibility crisis and the waste in research? This question came up in a recent Tweet pointing out the possible falsification of images in a key study on Alzheimer's disease in 2006 that led to considerable subsequent research. As Alex Holcombe pointed out "Even without fraud, many avenues that biologists … Continue reading What is the global cost of avoidable waste in research? →