In 2005, the physician and statistician John Ioannides published “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” in the journal PLoS Medicine. Ioannides cataloged the flaws of much biomedical research, pointing out that reported studies are less likely to be true when they are small, the postulated effect is likely to be weak, research designs and endpoints are flexible, financial and nonfinancial conflicts of interest are common, and competition in the field is fierce. Ioannides concluded that “for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”
If Ioannidis' findings apply to areas of science other than biomedical research (where there is also competition, pressure to publish, conflict of interest, etc.), then most scientific knowledge is already false at the time that it's published; you don't have to wait 45 years for it to become false like this article claims.
In 2005, the physician and statistician John Ioannides published “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” in the journal PLoS Medicine. Ioannides cataloged the flaws of much biomedical research, pointing out that reported studies are less likely to be true when they are small, the postulated effect is likely to be weak, research designs and endpoints are flexible, financial and nonfinancial conflicts of interest are common, and competition in the field is fierce. Ioannides concluded that “for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”
If Ioannidis' findings apply to areas of science other than biomedical research (where there is also competition, pressure to publish, conflict of interest, etc.), then most scientific knowledge is already false at the time that it's published; you don't have to wait 45 years for it to become false like this article claims.
Here are some references to Ioannidis' work:
- The cited PLoS paper (2005): http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...
- A less technical article in The Atlantic: "Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science" (2010): http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-dam...
Edit: Corrected spelling of Ioannidis' name; it's misspelled in the article.