Covid Research Waste - Bin 1

A Pandemic of Poor Quality Publications

It’s been over a decade since Chalmers and Glasziou demonstrated that 85% of research funding was “being avoidably wasted across the entire biomedical research spectrum.” Contributors to this research wastage included addressing the wrong questions for practice, poor study designs and execution, non-publication of research findings and poor reporting. 

However, we think the covid pandemic has taken research wastage to a whole new level.

By January 2021, global spending on covid research had hit $5 billion. Nine months in, the gold rush had started; the Times Higher Education reported many academics were working outside their expertise, and the rush led to many cancelled projects. After 27 months, a database of funded research reported 20,006 projects across 157 countries, costing at least $7.4 billion. 

One-quarter of the projects were awarded by UK funders (26%), with the US next on 23%. However, the US ranked first for total spending, investing $2.6 billion (36%), with the UK spending …