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A large fraction of commercial research antibodies fail when tested against cells engineered to lack their target, so they do not bind what the label says. Journals and funders should require knockout-validated antibodies for the claims a paper rests on, and fund public validation of the most-used cancer targets.
Antibody non-specificity is a leading cause of irreproducible results. Initiatives such as YCharOS test commercial antibodies against knockout cell lines and publish the results, finding that a large fraction of antibodies for a given target fail. A requirement that papers cite knockout- or knockdown-validated antibodies (with the validation record) for key claims, and funder support for a public validation programme covering the most-used cancer targets, would remove a pervasive source of error.