Blockchain in Science

Abstract

Evidence-based clinical sciences are currently suffering from a paralyzing reproducibility crisis. From clinical psychiology to cancer biology, recent metaresearch indicates a rise in researchers failing to replicate studies published by their peers. This problem is not just limited to benchwork that happens in a lab; it also plagues translational research where the transformation from bench to bedside happens. Treatments, tests, and technologies are converted from simple lab experiments to government-approved devices and assays that affect hundreds of lives. Therefore, replicability is crucial to converting scientific breakthroughs into pragmatic remedies. The primary role of blockchain technology in the emerging landscape of open-access science is increasing the amount of transparency into the processes. To that end, three use cases and applications are presented in this chapter: The first one involves deposition of data in clinical trials, the second one involves a reputation system that can be developed for researchers and institutes committed to open research, and the third one involves the application of supply-chain management for tracking counterfeit drugs. We begin by discussing the current paradigms of the research method and the importance of negative data, and our focus remains limited primarily to the clinical sciences. Then, we talk about traditional metrics and altmetrics systems presently implemented to measure the impact of published research. This allows us to transition into the use cases that supplement traditional metrics and expand them to make open science a fundamental feature. Finally, we end our discussion by looking at ongoing efforts in psychology research to incorporate prediction markets to verify research, and how prediction markets can be created using Augur.