‘Why is it that nobody can reproduce anybody else’s findings?’

Biomedical scientists around the world publish around 1 million new papers a year. But a staggering number of these cannot be replicated. Drastic action is needed now to clean up this mess, argues pharmacologist Csaba Szabo in Unreliable , his upcoming book on irreproducibility in the scientific literature. “The things that we’ve tried are not working,” says Szabo, a professor at the University of Fribourg. “I’m trying to suggest something different.” Unreliable , which will be available in March, is a disturbing but compelling exploration of the causes of irreproducibility—from hypercompetition and honest errors, to statistical shenanigans and outright fraud. In the book, Szabo argues that there is no quick fix and that incremental efforts such as educational workshops and checklists have made little difference. He says the whole system has to be overhauled with new scientific training programs, different ways of allocating funding, novel publication systems, and more criminal