A Dose of Reality: How 20 years of incomplete physics and dosimetry reporting in radiobiology studies may have contributed to the reproducibility crisis

Abstract Purpose A large proportion of pre-clinical or translational studies utilizing radiation have poor replicability. For a study involving radiation exposure to be replicable, interpretable, and comparable, its experimental methodology must be well reported, particularly in terms of irradiation protocol including the amount, rate, quality, and geometry of radiation delivery. Here we perform the first large-scale literature review of the current state of reporting of essential experimental physics and dosimetry details in the scientific literature. Methods We evaluated 1758 peer-reviewed articles from 469 journals on the reporting of basic experimental physics and dosimetry details recommended by the authoritative NIST symposium. Results We demonstrate that while some physics and dosimetry parameters such as dose, source type, and energy are well reported, the majority of others are not. Furthermore, highly cited journals and articles are systematically more likely to be lacking experimental details related to the irradiation protocol. Conclusions These findings show a crucial deficiency in the reporting of basic experimental details and severely impact the reproducibility and translatability of a large proportion of radiation biology studies.