Benign and malignant scientific irreproducibility

Irreproducibility is a widely recognized problem harming scientific progress. Here, we classify types of scientific irreproducibility based on deleteriousness using a cancer analogy: benign, pre-malignant and malignant. We discuss the difficulties of challenging potentially irreproducible papers, especially in high impact journals and/or by famous authors. We advocate for high impact journals publishing papers with large translation value, to...