SOTA: Reproducibility Quagmire in Preclinical Research: Taxonomy and Dogmatic Impediments to Translation

Publishing scientific reports in the field of spinal cord injury (SCI) research, notably in high impact journals has continually lacked reproducibility and the research investments have failed funders tremendously, and ultimately not delivered effective therapies to the very constituents it is aimed to help. The field is deluged with unimpactful research findings that are hyped up with the publishers' allowance. Furthermore, impediments to clinical translation are based on existing funding mechanisms for often-disparate incentives of the various 'silos of investors' in the quest for the cure (i.e., industry, regulators, academic researchers and administrations, hospitals, patients care, patients, etc.). It is now more than incumbent to recognize that to ‘fix’ cyclical scientific medical shortcomings, then academic research scientists and their institutional administrators, journals and their editors, both federal and private funders, and all regulatory tiers must each be held to higher standards of integrity without impunity. Only then can we manifest meaningful rigor and reproducibility, which may require more severe consequences for principal violations at all levels to impede the vicious cycle keeping meaningful translation in the valley of death.