[nonbel]

I have worked in a "wet lab" for years, but not cancer research. The first 3 were largely (of course there is always learning going on) a waste because I didn't understand what statistical significance really meant. I can't really blame myself since neither did anyone else in my committee, department, or seemingly the entire area of research. But anyway this meant the whole project was misdesigned from the start (the design was standard).

The next two were spent attempting to save the project by working 18 hour days almost constantly. In the end, despite what they claimed about doing it the usual way because "its so complicated, no one can come up with mathematical/computational models or actual predictions to test, no one can describe this or that in so much detail, etc", the actual truth was that it wasnt "too hard". It was that no one really cared about that. Instead they just wanted to know whether there were statistically significant differences anyway...

From what I've read of the cancer literature it looks exactly the same, probably worse. And guess what, there's been no real progress made for decades on the topic I was studying either.