Why Bad Data Is Slowing Longevity Research More Than Lack of Funding

The longevity research field faces a hidden infrastructure crisis that may be slowing progress more than any funding gap. According to Dr. Timofey Glinin, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSF and co-founder of the data-sharing platform First Approval, surveys of longevity scientists consistently rank lack of data access as their top barrier — above regulatory hurdles and financial constraints. This finding challenges the common assumption that money is the primary bottleneck in aging research.

The reproducibility crisis sits at the heart of the problem. Only 30–50% of biological studies can be independently reproduced, meaning a significant portion of published research may be building on flawed or unverifiable foundations. When raw datasets are not shared alongside published papers, other researchers cannot check, extend, or build upon findings — wasting enormous amounts of time and resources across the field.

Glinin draws an important distinction between raw and processed data. Processed data — the charts and statistics in a published paper — strips out the granular information other scientists need to re-analyze or repurpose findings. Raw datasets preserve that detail and enable entirely new questions to be asked from existing experiments. Yet most journals have no mechanism to publish or incentivize raw data sharing.

First Approval is designed to fill this gap by creating a dedicated platform where biological datasets can be published, peer-reviewed, and cited independently of traditional journal articles. The platform is also running a student competition with $7,500 in prizes to reward excellent dataset submissions, aiming to build a culture of data openness from early career stages.

For longevity-focused readers, the implication is significant: the pace of anti-aging discoveries depends not just on new experiments but on how efficiently the scientific community can learn from existing ones. Better data infrastructure could meaningfully compress the timeline to actionable longevity interventions.