Including this one?
If this publication is false, its premise is true, which would mean the publication is true?
If this publication is false, it's premise may or may not be true, which means we don't know anything.
Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
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Re: Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
#22Re: Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally, no. The article was published in PLoS Med, and concerns generally medical research studies. It has been more than 10 years and i think most people still don't disagree with it. Here is the authors response to criticisms: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1297555/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1896210/
Just for clarification, am I correct to assume that this mainly applies to research conducted in the medical field then?
Yes, in other fields its even worse. Soft sciences are not even rigorous...
Re: Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
#24Do you think a Github for science would help?
Having an open, accessible repository of scientific data sounds like a good thing, but I doubt it would help the problem of reproducibility.
The biggest problem of such a "github" would be that a scientific repository is only as good as its maintainer. In software development land we already see a lot of egos clashing over the code, but software has a clear "works/doesn't work" criteria. In many scientific areas such a criteria is hard to find and we'll have to rely on the personality of a repository maintainer.
The repositories will soon become a brand on its own. Think "nature.github.com", "physrev.github.com" and "lancet.github.com".
Re: Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
#25Do you think a Github for science would help?
If you don't have a clear mechanism by which a startup could solve this problem, I suspect the result would be the same structures that already exist, but with better marketing and a Web 2.0 interface. If anything, this would make the problem worse, because it creates a company that now has a vested interest in keeping the status quo because it's part of the status quo, and that company will be manipulating politics and public opinion with its marketing.
A second problem with this sort of company is that it often doesn't really understand the industry it's "disrupting", so they end up not solving a lot of the problems which older solutions solved.
At a more fundamental level, I think that a company is always going to be motivated to make money rather than solve a problem. Even if intentions start off well, the people in the company will believe that the company is good and needed, so they'll make choices that give up a little of the original purpose of the company to make the company survive, because if the company doesn't survive then it can't do any good, right? And after a bunch of one-degree deviations from its original direction, the company is going a completely different direction than its original purpose and isn't even geared toward solving the problem any more.
Sure, "We're going to save the world" is great marketing, but at this point I simply don't ever believe that a startup is a solution to a major problem like this.
Re: Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
#26I think the solution to this is that science publication needs to be done like science itself. Just as scientists commit to doing experiments without knowing what the results of the experiments will be, publishers need to commit to publishing experiments without knowing what the results of the experiments will be.
Publishers need to be involved earlier in the process. Instead of submitting a completed research finding, scientists should apply to publish research before doing it, and if the topic of research is interesting to the publisher, both scientist and publisher should commit to publish in that journal, no matter what the results are.
Additionally, publishers should commit to publish only something like 1/3 research into new topics, with the other 2/3 being publishing attempt to reproduce previous interesting results. I don't mean a slavish repetition of existing experiments, but taking a critical eye toward testing the same hypotheses with different (hopefully better) methodology.
Re: Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
#27Science doesn't seem to have fixed itself since. At this point it is prudent to shift the public's perception from "research is true" to "research is valid". To the extent in which public policy is dictated by research, it should be based, not on journal-published research, but perhaps on meta-analysis or third party research-on-research.
Re: Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
#28Beware the man of one study: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-...
Re: Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
#29I learned this in middle school during the Science Fair. My experiment didn't work. Up against the deadline and not wanting a 0, I simply made up the data. I got a nice big A. Probably exactly what happens in the real world too.
Re: Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)
#30Do you think a Github for science would help?
If you don't have a clear mechanism by which a startup could solve this problem, I suspect the result would be the same structures that already exist, but with better marketing and a Web 2.0 interface. If anything, this would make the problem worse, because it creates a company that now has a vested interest in keeping the status quo because it's part of the status quo, and that company will be manipulating politics…
Why does everything needs to be a startup?