Sometimes, it can be interesting to see how outside interests can lead straight back to work issues. There is an author I have followed, Carmel Deamicis, who mainly focuses on technology issues. He is now associated with a tech news website, www.pandodaily.com. Most of the articles on that site have little application in oncology but are just fun to read. This morning, however, they have posted an article—“This is what happens when you give social networking to scientists”—about a website that they label as one of the many “Facebook for . . .” sites: www.researchgate.net.
ResearchGate was established in 2008 by two physicians and a computer scientist and currently has four million registered members. Its stated mission is to “connect researchers and make it easy for them to share, discover, use, and distribute findings. Open discussion and evaluation of findings between the members is encouraged.” While this can be easy to say, little true impact is often seen. That has not been the case with ResearchGate. Results from a recent paper published in Nature1 could not be replicated. Discussions regarding this difficulty have led the publishing institution to consider retracting the paper2.
This is all fine and good but how can this relate to oncology? Currently, it seems as if a majority of the phase III trials to be developed will come directly from the NCI as opposed to the previous paradigm of trials being developed from within the co-operative groups. My previous institution was a member of the North Central Cancer Treatment Group (RIP), which was founded under the auspices of Dr. Charles Moertel, with the notion that community oncologists had a valuable voice in both the development and performance of clinical trials. NCCTG meetings were always open to any member offering input into trial structures and ideas. My concern with the new NCI proposal is that a forum for that input will be greatly diminished if not entirely lost.
It strikes me that ResearchGate can offer a real chance to reclaim that input. If the NCI were to put trials on this forum for review and input from participating members, it could go a long way towards strengthening the connection and interest of researchers for that trial. Certainly, trials are usually well developed by the time they would ever get to this level of comment. There can be, however, practical issues that the community oncologist could identify that could significantly impact accrual and adherence to these studies.
I would encourage leadership in the trials areas of the NCI to consider some form of review and comment from the community. With ResearchGate, it certainly seems as if a mechanism exists.