Despite decades of raising awareness about reproducibility issues in research, it remains a major challenge for scientists to overcome today. Several facts support this bold statement: back in 2015, Freedman estimated the financial impact of irreproducibility in preclinical research alone at $28 billion annually (Freedman et al., 2015). In 2016, a landmark Nature survey (Aarts et al., 2015) revealed that over 70% of biology researchers couldn’t reproduce other scientists’ findings, and approximately 60% of researchers could not reproduce their own findings. More recently, in 2021, the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology highlighted this issue when researchers were only able to replicate the methodology in 50 out of 193 planned experiments.
The stem cell field is not spared from this crisis. In a 2025 paper, the stem cell community sounds the alarm, emphasizing that a lack of reproducibility can compromise the reputation of the entire community and hinder the future adoption of cell-based models (Selfa Aspiroz et al., 2025).
Why are we here?
The answer seems to lie within the existing research culture, otherwise known as “These QC issues can’t happen in my lab!”
The facts clearly demonstrate that QC issues can become everyone’s problem.
Related to these attitudes, the following list of culprits was identified in (Selfa Aspiroz et al., 2025) paper as potential causes for irreproducibility in research:
- Errors in study design
- Selective reporting practices
- Misidentification and contamination of research materials
- Cellular decay over passages
- Biological variability linked to cell line selection, genetic background, genomic instability, differentiation protocols, and inaccurate standard operating procedures (SOPs)
A glimpse of hope
Crusaders for increased quality and rigor in research have relentlessly tried to tackle this issue… and there is a glimpse of hope! In July 2023, the ISSCR Standards published a guidance document for the use of human stem cells in research, covering the topics of basic characterization, pluripotency and the undifferentiated state, genomic characterization on? stem cell-based model systems, and reporting guidance that an increasing number of publications now require authors to follow at the publication stage.
The efforts of the ISSCR community as well as industry stakeholders have helped raise awareness of the issue, which is the primary challenge!
Click on the image to access the Reporting Practices Checklist from the ISSCR, available as a downloadable fillable PDF.
Moving beyond awareness
So beyond raising awareness, what else can our community do to ensure rigor and reproducibility become the norm in the stem cell community? The (Selfa Aspiroz et al., 2025) paper suggests the following solutions:
- Making examples of best practice visible (see this article for a real-life experience)
- “Badges” to acknowledge authors’ compliance with these practices
- Incentives and policy interventions to encourage adoption of best practices
- Open science in more funding and publishing policies, with practices rewarded in researcher career progression
- Core facilities promoting best practices and standards adoption
- Education and training at all stages of research careers
- Creation of comprehensive reference databases documenting cell line derivation, characterization, and experimental conditions to further enable benchmarking and comparability across studies
Guidelines and resources
The following references can be used as guidelines:
International and reputable reference standards in the field that scientists can use as guidelines or best practices:
- ISO 24603:2022
- The Guidance document on GCCP
- The ISSCR Standards built upon the foundational work of the International Stem Cell Initiative
Additional resources:
- Reporting checklists for publications and use as a base for establishing processes in labs
- Regulatory bodies and organizations that can support scientists in implementing new standards in their labs
Conclusion
As mathematical biologist Irakli Loladze from Bryan College of Health Sciences in Lincoln, Nebraska, puts it: “Reproducibility is like brushing your teeth. It’s good for you, but it takes time and effort. Once you learn it, it becomes a habit.”
Now that global standards have been established, it falls to scientists in the field to implement them and improve research quality. You too can contribute to the collective effort to enhance standards and best practices by sharing your own approaches with the broader community.
References:
Aarts, A. A., Anderson, J. E., Anderson, C. J., Attridge, P. R., Attwood, A., Axt, J., Babel, M., Bahník, Š., Baranski, E., Barnett-Cowan, M., Bartmess, E., Beer, J., Bell, R., Bentley, H., Beyan, L., Binion, G., Borsboom, D., Bosch, A., Bosco, F. A., … Zuni, K. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716
Freedman, L. P., Cockburn, I. M., & Simcoe, T. S. (2015). The economics of reproducibility in preclinical research. PLoS Biology, 13(6), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002165
Selfa Aspiroz, L., Mennecozzi, M., Batlle, L., Corneo, B., Healy, L., Kotter, M., Kurtz, A., Ludwig, T. E., Mummery, C., Pera, M., Stacey, G. N., Tristan, C. A., & Whelan, M. (2025). Promoting the adoption of best practices and standards to enhance quality and reproducibility of stem cell research. In Stem Cell Reports (Vol. 20, Issue 7). Cell Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2025.102531
