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The vagaries of laboratory experiments

With much research threatened by flawed methods and misconduct, will AI bring unprecedented scientific progress or merely increase the unreliability problem?

Stuart Ritchie
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EXPLORE THE ISSUE 15 March 2025
issue 15 March 2025

  • Unreliable: Bias, Fraud and the Reproducibility Crisis in Biomedical Research

    Csaba Szabo

    Columbia University Press, pp. 336, £22

One usually likes to think that scientists know what they’re doing. Here’s something that might shake your confidence. In bio-medical research, scientists often use cell lines. These are in vitro cells, originally taken from a human or animal donor, which can be experimented on to help develop new drugs or treatments.

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