Research Waste

“We need less research, better research, and research done for right reasons”

(Douglas G Altman 1994)

Biomedical research uses exorbitant economic and human resources to build new knowledge, bring about improvements in existing medical practices and lead the way to new advances. This vast endeavor has led to substantial enhancement in clinical and public health outcomes, but many more gains are possible if research waste is regulated. Research waste refers to poor-quality research output that is often perceived as of minimal use to health policy-makers and clinicians.

For a country with limited resources, research waste can have pernicious implications. It is an undesirable but avoidable inadequacy that can occur at any stage of the research process. Research undertaken without any form of prioritization by researchers and funders contributes to a major portion of research waste. Other factors behind the accumulation of research waste have been generally identified as imbalanced research questions, gaps in evidence base not taken into account, flawed study design and execution, use of unvalidated outcome measures, waste due to inaccessible research, publication and other reporting biases, duplication of studies, insufficient registration of clinical trials, failure of new research to systematically review previous findings in the same subject area, lack of accessibility and sharing, and the use of spin that distorts the interpretation of results. This situation is economically, scientifically, and ethically unjustifiable.

Waste in biomedical research has been in the spotlight in recent years and the scientific community has a responsibility to reduce waste and work to improve the efficiency and impact of research endeavors. This waste arises from the cumulative effects at various steps of research: Over 50% of research is not published; over 50% has avoidable design flaws; and over 50% is unusable or incompletely reported or both. If losses due to research waste are estimated financially, about 85% of the research investment, which implies to billions of dollars, is all lost due to a correctable flaw.

Since there are problems within each stage of production and reporting, there cannot be a singular straightforward way of tackling the problem; even small efforts to improve production and reporting of research are likely to yield substantially increased dividends for patients and the public. The 2015 Edinburgh conference, the REduce research Waste And Reward Diligence (REWARD) alliance was founded aiming to reduce waste and increase the value of biomedical research. All the stakeholders-researchers, institutions, funders, journals, and research users need to actively engage in simple measures to reduce research waste. The problem is reversible, efficient mechanisms for scientific quality management that needs to be optimized at every stage of research continuum rather than producing misleading results which do not result in any societal or biomedical benefits.