The email that arrived in Richard Young'sinbox in October 2013 was polite but firm. The writer was part of a group ofresearchers who“are conducting a study to investigate the reproducibility ofrecent research findings in ceancer biology." A paper that Young hadpublished in Cell in 2012 on how a protein called c-Myc spurs tumor growth wasamong 50 high-impact papers chosen for scrutiny by the Reproducibility Project:Cancer Biology. The group might need help with materials and advice onexperimental design, the message said. Young wrote back that a Europcan lab hadalready published a replication of his study. No matter, the project'srepresentative replied, they still wanted to repcat it. But they needed moreinformation about the protocol. After weeks of emails back and forth andscrambling by graduate students and postdocs to spell out procedures inintricate detail, the group clarifed that they did not want to replicate the 30or so experiments in the Cell paper, but just four describcd in a single keyfigure.
This past January, the cancer reproducibility project published its protocolfor replicating the experiments, and the waiting began for Young to see whetherhis work will hold up in their hands. He says that if the project doesmatch his results, it will be unsurprising- the paper's findings have alreadybeen reproduccd. If it doesn't, a lack of expertise in the replicating Iab maybe responsible. Either way, the project seems a waste of time, Youngsays.“I am a huge fan of reproducibility. But this mechanism is not the way totest it."
That is a typical reaction from investigators whose work is being scrutinizedby the cancer reproducibility project, an ambitious, open-science effort totest whether key findings in Science, Nature, Cell, and other top journals canbe reproduced by independent labs. Almost every scicentist targeted by theproject who spoke with Science agrees that studies in cancer biology, as inmany other fields, too often turn out to be irreproducible, for reasons such asproblematic reagents and the fickleness of biological systems. But few feelcomforablc with this particular effort, which plans to announce its findings incoming months. Their reactions range from annoyance to anxiety to outrage.Cancer geneticist Todd Golub of the Broad Institute in Cambridge has a paper onthe group's list. But he is “concerned about a single group using scientistswithout deep expertise to reproduce decades of complicated, nuanccdexperiments."
Golub and others worry that if the cancer reproducibility project announcesthat many of the 50 studies failed its test, individual reputations will bedamaged and public support for biomcdical research undermined.“I really hopethat these people are aware of how much responsibility they have," sayscancer biologist Lars Zender of the University of Tibingen in Germnany.
Timothy Erringlon, the reproducibility effor's manager at the nonprofit Centerfor Open Science in Charlottesville, Virginia, knows the scrutiny has unsettledthe community. But, he says, the project is working hard to make sure that thelabs have all the details they need to match the original studies. The effortwill ultimately benefit the field, he says, by gauging the extent of thereproducibility problem in cancer biology.
What can be said about the reproducibility project?
A、It planned to examine the 50 most influential papers in Cell.
B、It was very particular about the papers on cancer reproducibility.
C、It lacked skills required in the lab.
D、It faced a negative reaction.
【正确答案】：D