Why 85% of Health Research is Wasted with Paul Glasziou

January 12, 2018 · Flavio Rump

TL;DR

  • 85% of biomedical research is wasted
  • 50% because it never gets published
  • Of the remaining, another 50% because publication is not complete and applicable
  • Of the remaining, another 50% because study includes fixable design flaws
  • Several initiatives underway to fix the issues
  • Some funders achieve 98% publication rates
  • Technological tools assist in doing systematic reviews

About Paul Glasziou

Paul Glasziou is a Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at Bond University. He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles and 7 books. ORCID Profile

85% of Biomedical Research is Being Wasted

Paul Glasziou and Iain Chalmers published a widely referenced study in 2009 stating that "85% of biomedical research is being wasted." Over 50% of all health research does not get published at all. From published research, 50% is not usable in practice. From the remaining 25%, half contains design flaws. This totals over 87.5% waste.

Three Main Problems

1. The No-Submission Problem

Publication bias toward positive results means negative results often go unpublished. The solution lies in financial incentives where funders hold back funding until results are published. The NIHR HTA Programme reaches a 98% publication rate using this approach.

Reward Alliance

2. Incomplete Research

Journals don't require protocol details, making it impossible to replicate or fully understand studies. The solution is building infrastructure for publishing complete data publicly.

3. Avoidable Design Flaws

Many studies contain fixable design flaws that could be avoided with proper statistician consultation and systematic literature review.

ICASR - International Collaboration for the Automation of Systematic Reviews

Tools for Systematic Reviews

Calls to Action

  • Funders should rethink payout schemes to incentivize publication of all results.
  • Software engineers should build tools to assist with systematic reviews and research quality.
  • Scientists should pursue statistics training and commit to publishing all results, including negative ones.

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