{"entity":{"id":"idea-tr2-replication-bounties","kind":"idea","name":"Bounties for documented failed replications of high-impact findings","aka":[],"tldr":"Pay a fixed reward to any lab that pre-registers and carefully repeats a heavily cited preclinical cancer finding, whatever the outcome, with a bonus for the first documented non-replication that passes methodological review. Today that work is unpaid and unpublished.","summary":"Security research uses bug bounties to reward finding flaws. A replication bounty programme would list high-impact preclinical oncology findings (selected by citations and translational stage), pay a fixed sum for a pre-registered, adequately powered replication attempt regardless of outcome, and a bonus for the first documented non-replication that passes methodological review. Results are published in a registry.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Preclinical results do not reproduce): Errington et al., Investigating the replicability of preclinical cancer biology (eLife 2021)","url":"https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71601"}],"tags":[],"related":["idea-tr2-replication-set-aside","idea-tr2-preclinical-negative-registry"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-reproducibility","b-negative-results"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"The programme will produce at least 50 pre-registered replications per year at a cost per replication under a tenth of a standard grant, and at least a third of targeted findings will fail to replicate.","rationale":"Replication attempts already happen informally in labs and industry; the bounty converts private knowledge into public record at low cost.","test":"Fund 50 bounties in year one; measure uptake, methodological quality of submissions and publication of results.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"philanthropy","cost":"small","horizonYears":1},"route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-replication-bounties/","neighbours":{"idea":[{"id":"idea-tr2-preclinical-negative-registry","kind":"idea","name":"A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-preclinical-negative-registry/"},{"id":"idea-tr2-replication-status-badge","kind":"idea","name":"A replication status badge on every cancer paper, visible in PubMed","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-replication-status-badge/"},{"id":"idea-tr2-replication-set-aside","kind":"idea","name":"Funders set aside a fixed share of budget for independent replication","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-replication-set-aside/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-negative-results","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Failures are hidden","route":"/bottlenecks/b-negative-results/"},{"id":"b-reproducibility","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Preclinical results do not reproduce","route":"/bottlenecks/b-reproducibility/"}]}}