Speaker
Description
Biomedical research is celebrated as a driver of innovation and patient benefit — yet much of what we produce is unreliable, unpublished, or irrelevant. Preclinical work still struggles with basic internal validity: missing blinding and randomization, small samples, flexible analyses, and a storytelling culture that turns exploratory findings into “discoveries.” Publication bias remains so pervasive that major research areas rest on untested assumptions.
Clinical research once had similar problems but confronted them directly: preregistration, randomized trials, a separation of exploratory and confirmatory work, evidence-based medicine, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, and conflict-of-interest disclosure. The result was not perfection, but clear progress.
Why is broader biomedicine slower to change? Structural pressures: large financial stakes, heavy clinical and teaching loads, limited training in research methods, rigid hierarchies, and incentive systems that reward impact factors, grants, and flashy claims over truth. Even in clinical research, waste persists through underpowered studies, marginally novel questions, industry-shaped biases, and unpublished results.
Still, momentum for reform is growing in preclinical science: preregistration, open data, preprints, transparent reporting, and funded confirmatory studies are slowly reshaping norms. The core lesson is uncomfortable: improving research quality is not mainly a technical problem but an incentive problem. If institutions reward rigor, transparency, and reproducibility, we can reduce waste, improve quality, and build a research enterprise worthy of public trust.
About:
In both preclinical and clinical studies, Ulrich Dirnagl’s research has uncovered pathobiological mechanisms that influence outcomes after stroke. Several of these mechanisms are therapeutically targetable, and clinical trials are underway. In addition, his meta-research has identified opportunities to improve research practices and has generated evidence for the effectiveness of interventions designed to increase the value of biomedical research. Until his retirement in 2025 from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Ulrich Dirnagl was Professor of Clinical Neuroscience and served as the founding director of the Department of Experimental Neurology from 1999 to 2022. From 2017 to 2025, he also served as the founding director of the QUEST Center for Responsible Biomedical Research at the Berlin Institute of Health. QUEST seeks to overcome roadblocks in translational medicine by increasing the value and impact of biomedical research through enhanced quality, reproducibility, generalizability, and validity.
