I agree with the overall sentiment, the scientific community working on cancer cure(s) is failing us, the patients and their families.
And they are failing us because of some fundamental gaps in how the research, and subsequent review/dissemination/presentation of finding is done. I suspect there are multiple failures in the process. The standards of scientific proof and repeatability, used by mathematicians, physicists and chemists are not followed
The net result is the following disappointing statistic:
"...
In 1971, President Nixon and Congress declared war on cancer. Since then, the federal government has spent well over $105 billion on the effort (Kolata 2009b).
...
Gina Kolata pointed out in The New York Times that the cancer death rate, adjusted for the size and age of the population, has decreased by only 5 percent since 1950 (Kolata 2009a)." [1]
And this was just the US federal government investment. Not counting the private donations, and private company research.
Today the annual fed investment is 5bln annually [3]
I do not mean to sound totally discouraged, as clearly the screenings have helped many to detect cancers before they metastasized. And I would say the science results are showing that that part of the research is working well.
However,for the cancers that can be rarely be detected before the spread (eg pancreatic cancer and others) -- the investment our country and other societies have put in -- simply has not payed off.
What worries me is that our research quality gates are not able to improve the QoS of the underlying research.
And with my 'management hat on' -- I am reaching out for this quote by Einstein.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The OP paper is not the first one pointing at the lack of reproducible results, and it not just for cancer research
"...
But it may also be due to current state of science. Scientists themselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the unreliability – that is, the lack of reproducibility — of many experimental or observational results.
..." [2]
There needs to be a bit of a revolution in the science of the cancer research and the way money is allocated to it.
Clearly the current model does not work and likely is encouraging the pseudo science to prosper.
And they are failing us because of some fundamental gaps in how the research, and subsequent review/dissemination/presentation of finding is done. I suspect there are multiple failures in the process. The standards of scientific proof and repeatability, used by mathematicians, physicists and chemists are not followed
The net result is the following disappointing statistic:
"... In 1971, President Nixon and Congress declared war on cancer. Since then, the federal government has spent well over $105 billion on the effort (Kolata 2009b). ... Gina Kolata pointed out in The New York Times that the cancer death rate, adjusted for the size and age of the population, has decreased by only 5 percent since 1950 (Kolata 2009a)." [1]
And this was just the US federal government investment. Not counting the private donations, and private company research. Today the annual fed investment is 5bln annually [3] I do not mean to sound totally discouraged, as clearly the screenings have helped many to detect cancers before they metastasized. And I would say the science results are showing that that part of the research is working well.
However,for the cancers that can be rarely be detected before the spread (eg pancreatic cancer and others) -- the investment our country and other societies have put in -- simply has not payed off.
What worries me is that our research quality gates are not able to improve the QoS of the underlying research.
And with my 'management hat on' -- I am reaching out for this quote by Einstein.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The OP paper is not the first one pointing at the lack of reproducible results, and it not just for cancer research "... But it may also be due to current state of science. Scientists themselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the unreliability – that is, the lack of reproducibility — of many experimental or observational results. ..." [2]
There needs to be a bit of a revolution in the science of the cancer research and the way money is allocated to it. Clearly the current model does not work and likely is encouraging the pseudo science to prosper.
[1] http://www.csicop.org/si/show/war_on_cancer_a_progress_repor...
[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2014/01/08/the-troub...
[3]http://blogs.reuters.com/stories-id-like-to-see/2014/09/09/t...