BioSkepsis Joins SciSure: Cited Literature Review for Life Science

Why preclinical reproducibility makes literature review a bench decision

Deciding what to test next is an evidence problem. Before a knockdown, a dose-response series or a new antibody panel, a scientist has to search across papers, reconcile conflicting findings and judge how the published record relates to the result already sitting in the lab notebook.

That record is less solid than it looks. Freedman, Cockburn and Simcoe estimated that the cumulative prevalence of irreproducible preclinical research exceeds 50%, corresponding to approximately $28 billion per year in the United States alone (PMID 26057340). They attributed the largest shares of that spend to biological reagents and reference materials (36%) and study design (28%), with data analysis, reporting and laboratory protocols accounting for the rest.

When literature review happens in one tool and experiment planning in another, those weaknesses travel silently into the next protocol. The SciSure integration puts the evidence check in the same place the protocol is written.

From research question to cited biomedical evidence brief inside SciSure

SciSure is a Scientific Management Platform used by scientists, LabOps and EHS teams to run safer, more reproducible research environments. With the BioSkepsis add-on, a researcher can ask a scientific question or describe an experiment directly in SciSure. BioSkepsis searches the relevant literature, evaluates the findings and returns a cited research brief that shows where evidence aligns, where it conflicts and where it is limited.

The same brief can be used to benchmark an experimental finding against published work, and to surface candidate mechanisms and follow-up experiments. For a worked example of that pattern, see the interpret-my-lab-result use case.

“Researchers shouldn’t have to separate the work of running an experiment from the evidence that informs it. […] It’s a strong example of how we want to expand SciSure through tools that fit naturally into the way scientists work.” Andrew Martin, Director of Marketplace Development, SciSure

The Trust Index: scoring biomedical evidence strength across six facets

Every BioSkepsis brief carries a Trust Index from 0 to 100. It is a summary of how well the evidence behind the brief holds up, not a rating of how confident the prose sounds. The score decomposes into six facet checks, each marked OK, Caution, Weak or N/A:

1. Provenance — where the evidence comes from.
2. Grounding — whether each claim matches the exact passage it cites; weighted heavily because it guards against overstatement.
3. Evidence strength — whether claims rest on causal, associational, synthesis or preclinical evidence.
4. Reproducibility — whether independent groups have replicated the finding.
5. Durability — whether the finding still holds against later literature.
6. Reagent validity — whether the tools behind the finding were sound.

Facets are weighted, not averaged, and a facet that does not apply to the question is excluded rather than penalised. Two briefs can share a score for different reasons; opening the facets shows which kind of caution applies.

Evidence Watch and Research Feed: monitoring retractions and new biomedical literature

A literature review is a snapshot; the evidence base keeps moving. Evidence Watch re-validates the claims behind a brief on a schedule and alerts the researcher when a cited paper is retracted, corrected or superseded by newer evidence.

The Research Feed follows new publications in the topics relevant to a researcher’s work. The Literature Landscape gives a visual view of a field through citation networks, clusters and timelines, connecting papers by the genes, proteins, drugs, diseases and pathways they share. Collections keep relevant papers and briefs together for later reference.

“Every research decision is only as strong as the evidence behind it. […] Joining the SciSure Marketplace brings that capability directly into the environment where experiments are planned and documented, so researchers can benchmark their results against the published record and choose their next step with greater confidence.” Dimitris Kyriakou, Co-founder and CEO, EFEVRE TECH LTD

Who the SciSure integration serves in life-science research

Availability, data handling and pricing for life-science teams

BioSkepsis is available now through the SciSure Marketplace. When the add-on is used through the integration, files and experimental results remain within the SciSure workspace.

A free plan is available with no credit card required; additional plans cover individual researchers, teams and organizations (see pricing). BioSkepsis is also listed in the Claude connector directory, so the same citation-grounded briefs can be run from inside Claude; setup is described in the Claude connector guide.

Frequently asked questions