Reproducibility of Scientific Claims in Drosophila Immunity: A Retrospective Analysis of 400 Publications

Drosophila immunity has been the focus of intense study and has impacted other research fields including innate immunity and agriculturally or epidemiologically relevant investigations of insect pests and vectors. Unsurprisingly for such a large body of work, some published results were later found to be irreproducible. Although some results have been contradicted in the literature, many have no published follow-up, either due to a lack of research or low motivation to publish negative or contradictory results. We have addressed this by performing a reproducibility project that analyses the verifiability of claims from articles published on Drosophila immunity before 2011. To assess reproducibility, we extracted claims from 400 articles on the Drosophila immune response to bacteria and fungi and performed preliminary verification by comparing these claims to other published literature in the field. Using alternative approaches, we also experimentally tested some ‘unchallenged’ claims, which had no published follow-up. The intent of this analysis was to centralize evidence on insights and findings to improve clarity for scientists that may base research programs on these data. All our data are published on a publicly available website associated with this article (<ext-link xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://ReproSci.epfl.ch/">https://ReproSci.epfl.ch/</ext-link> <underline>)</underline> that encourages community participation. This article provides a short summary of claims that were found to have contradictory evidence, which may help the community to assess past findings on Drosophila immunity and improve clarity going forward.