Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Study Shows One Third of All Studies Are Nonsense

Posted by samzenpus on from the 9-out-of-10-researchers-surveyed dept.

SydShamino writes "CNN has a report on new research to confirm claims made in initial, well-publicized studies. According to the new study, about a third of all major studies from the last 15 years were subsequently shown to be inaccurate or overblown. The study abstract is available."

3 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nonsense! by GileadGreene · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, but this wasn't talking about surveys with leading questions. TFA was talking about clinical studies published in medical journals like JAMA and the New england Journal of Medicine.

  2. Science by press conference by jokestress · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Sadly, this has become a cottage industry for less scrupulous publicity-hungry hacks in academia and elsewhere. Think Clonaid or cold fusion. Come up with some hasty conclusion and make a grand announcement before the data is available or has been tested by others.

    Even worse are the lazy journalists who report it. After a New York Times piece last week claimed bisexual males were "lying" based on results from a highly questionable study, I reminded their editors of this excellent piece Blinded by Science in Columbia Journalism Review.

    This kind of sloppy reporting is perfect for lazy journalists-- it's a three-for-one deal. They get to break the news, and then later they have a second story when real experts point out the flaws, and a third when the people finally get discredited. More evidence of the shameful state of journalism in this country.

    --
    Evil sig is livE.
  3. Re:Falsifiability. by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Not exactly. Science is supposed to be a series of experiments designed to prove or disprove hypotheses. Having hypotheses disproved is of course a normal part of this process. However, having different experiments prove and disprove the same hypothesis is *not* a normal part of a healthy scientific process. It indicates either an incorrectly formed hypothesis or errors in experimental methods.

    Obviously errors are not completely avoidable because people are fallible; that's why we try to reproduce results and practice peer review. But I should think we ought to do better than having 33% of our supposedly "proven" hypotheses eventually disproved by subsequent experiments.

    Note that I'm not talking here about trivial things like Netwon's laws of motion being "disproved" by relativity. Relativity is more like a generalization of Newton's laws than a refutation, and that *is* a part of the normal scientific process. I'm talking here about medical studies which come up with conflicting results or the innumerable global warming studies that the scientific community can't make up its mind on (for example).

    --
    main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}