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> Numerous trials investigating similar hypotheses risk duplication of effort, and droves of research papers have been rushed to preprint servers, essentially outsourcing peer review to practicing physicians and journalists.

I’m curious about this point. Often we have the opposite problem, that we can’t get anyone to replicate studies with strong looking but potentially specious results. Isn’t perhaps a small amount of duplication of effort a good thing, especially if studies are rushing and letting standards slip a little? Aside from coordinating and not using too much of the funding to investigate a particular hypothesis, what are the other reasons to avoid duplication of effort?




Their point is that there is actually a very large amount of duplicate effort is happening now, as everyone separately goes for the first ideas: this makes it more probable that a lot of effort will be wasted on super-duper-triple confirming that the first thing everyone thought of didn't work, slowing the exploration of more nuanced ideas.

But besides waste of time and resources, the only other problem they mention is an increase of false positives. These naturally become more common as you try the same thing more often unless you correct for it by keeping track of all the other trials.


My problem is that there are too many inconclusive trial. Someone makes a small trial without a control group, so the result is promising but difficult to interpret. Someone else makes a small trial without a control group, so the result is promising but difficult to interpret. Another person makes a small test without a control group, so the result is promising but difficult to interpret. ...

So after a few months, we only have promising inconclusive results.

Not that all the trials are different, so it is difficult to compare them. IIRC There was a recent trial with remdesivir without good results, but they only tried the drug in patients with strong symptoms. So people asked what happens if they use the drug in the beginning of the infection.




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