Reproducibility thrown into spotlight

The biotech company Amgen has published details of three failed attempts to replicate research, as part of a venture seeking to influence publishing practices.

The online site, run by the publisher F1000Research, launched on 4 February with the publication of the three Amgen studies. The channel has been set up to publish both confirmatory and non-confirmatory studies to highlight the issue of reproducibility in biomedical research, F1000Research said. 

In an editorial, Bruce Alberts, an advisory board member for F1000Research, and Sasha Kamb, Amgen’s senior vice-president for research, said that they hoped to establish a “new publishing culture” to enhance the “crucial self-correcting feature of science”.