Handling False Positives in the Genomic Era

[摘要] The genomic era is upon us, promising to individualize medicine and creating a buzz among scientists, physicians, and the general public alike. Although it is easy to become entwined in the excitement and anticipation of the impending medical revolution, scientists and clinicians must be vigilant about novel and unexpected scientific findings to prevent genomics from tarnishing its own reputation with a major blemish: false positives. A recent “Commentary” article in the journal Nature highlights the prevalence and negative impact of false-positive publications and discusses strategies to avoid reporting false positives as novel findings (1).False positives are not new to the world of science; however, the ease with which a study can accidentally generate false positives has dramatically increased owing to the contemporary availability and production of massive and complex data sets. Generating such large amounts of data inevitably leads to greater numbers of tests performed, allowing apparently stronger signals to emerge by chance with greater frequency …

[学科分类] 过敏症与临床免疫学