Forbes: The Trouble With 'Scientific' Research Today: A Lot That's Published Is Junk
Many non-scientists are confused and dismayed by the constantly changing advice that comes from medical and other researchers on various issues. ...
... Some of that confusion is due to the quality of the evidence, which is dependent on a number of factors, while some is due to the nature of science itself: We form hypotheses and then perform experiments to test them; as the data accumulate and various hypotheses are rejected, we become more confident about what we think we know.
But it may also be due to current state of science. Scientists themselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the unreliability – that is, the lack of reproducibility — of many experimental or observational results. ...
... If designed and performed correctly, lab-based experiments should be more reliable than observational studies. However, recent evidence indicates that often they are flawed: Researchers may tinker with their experimental design until they get the result they want and then rush to publish without replicating their own work, for example....
... After a series of failed attempts to extend basic research findings (from academic labs), two large drug companies, Bayer and Amgen, carefully reviewed their own experience and found that only 25 and 11 percent, respectively, of the claims in the scientific literature could be replicated in a way that was sufficiently robust to be useful as the basis for drug development projects. Astonishingly, even when they asked the original researchers to replicate their own work, for the most part they could not. This may explain why scientists’ ability to translate cancer research in the laboratory to clinical success has been shockingly poor. ...
... A number of empirical studies show that 80-90% of the claims coming from supposedly scientific studies in major journals fail to replicate. This is scandalous, and the problem is only likely to become worse with the proliferation of “predatory publishers” of many open-access journals. ...
... Another worrisome trend is the increasing publication of the results of flawed “advocacy research” that is actually designed to give a false result that provides propaganda value for activists and can be cited long after the findings have been discredited. ...
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