NIH Director Gives More Details On New Government Medical Journal

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is planning to launch a new journal that will focus on publishing replication results, making it a high-profile scientific activity. NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya envisions people being able to see similar papers that looked at the same questions. The existing journals have problems such as not publishing all of the data that underpins studies, and not publishing replication research. Bhattacharya wants the government to devote resources to replication, estimating that 20 percent of the NIH budget be designated for that purpose. Replication is the process of taking a study, repeating it, and seeing if the results are the same. Currently, scientists cannot earn large grants from the NIH for replication work, which means they cannot receive tenure at a top university. The new journal will also publish negative results, or when scientists try to replicate a study and fail. Emphasizing replication will make scientific literature more reliable, according to Bhattacharya, and will change the culture of science so that it "rewards truth rather than influence."