Improving trust and transparency in heart research

Scientists are under pressure to publish impactful research quickly. In this “publish or perish” culture of science, scientists who are the first to publish a discovery in a well-known journal are often rewarded with credit and more funding. But this publication pressure can have unintended consequences and lead to the publication of incomplete or flawed research. To improve the quality and integrity of research, advocates encourage scientists to share their data and how they came to their conclusions to allow others to verify or replicate their work.

Several fields, including cancer research, have launched efforts to improve study quality and transparency. But so far, there has been little analysis about the reproducibility and replicability of cardiovascular disease research. Assessing how much information cardiovascular researchers provide about their methods, materials, and data could help determine the quality of heart disease research studies and boost confidence in the field’s discoveries.

Heckerman et al. found that fewer than 2 percent of heart disease research studies include enough information to be verified by other scientists. In the analysis, Heckerman et al. analyzed 393 cardiovascular disease research studies to determine if the studies provided enough information for others to replicate their work. The amount of information the authors shared varied according to study type. Studies describing the experiences of individuals or small numbers of patients shared the least information about how they came to their conclusions, while larger clinical trials shared more. In some cases, such as when a study used personally identifiable patient information or a drug company’s proprietary data, there may have been reasons to keep the data confidential.

The findings provide valuable information for both cardiovascular scientists and the public. They show a lot of room to improve trust in cardiovascular disease research by ensuring more studies are verifiable. Scientific journals and research funders could incentivize researchers to share more information about their methods and data to increase trust and transparency in the field.