I have now been working in the field of cancer biomarker discovery for over 30 years. The investment over the last decade or so has been high – as has the excitement – but, in my opinion, the actual yield of new cancer biomarkers has been very poor.

There are many reasons for this, but I believe there is a major problem that needs to be tackled: false discovery. All too often, a group will believe that they have discovered a new biomarker, and they will hurry to publish in a prestigious journal. And all too often, it becomes apparent that the biomarker is not performing as expected, and that the results are unreliable and can’t be reproduced. In short, the discovery is a false one.