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Scientist Says Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong
An anonymous reader writes "According to epidemiologist John Ioannidis, the majority of published scientific papers are wrong. If Ioannidis's own paper is right, a randomly chosen scientific paper has less than a 50% chance of being true. He also says that many papers may only be accurate measures of the prevailing bias among scientists. However, a senior editor of a scientific journal says that scientists are already aware of this: 'When I read the literature, I'm not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I'm reading to get ideas. So even if something is wrong with the paper, if they have the kernel of a novel idea, that's something to think about.'"
Their is a 50% chance that that's not true.
Wow, I thought Study Shows One Third of All Studies Are Nonsense is bad enough, who knows scientific papers are worse!
I patiently await the next article: "Research Shows Three-Quarters of All Researches Are Bullshit".
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Therefore anything that anyone says is simply an opinion.
That's just your opinion.
Who ordered that?
If 50% are wrong, then 50% are right. So if I write a scientific paper, the chance of it being right is 1/2. And if I write the same paper, say, 8 times, the chance of it being right at least once is 255/256.
I think I'll write that paper on statistics.
If atoms aren't billard balls, how can you be sure we're monkeys?
If fish aren't landmines, how can you be sure we're really elk?
But, more to the point, should you be really drawing any conclusions?
No. Not until the smoke clears, and I can once again tell the difference between billiard balls, atoms, monkeys, landmines, and elk. And neither should you.
It seems to me that lately a lot of comments on slashdot have been trying to start a witch hunt for advocates of ID. Can we please knock it off and stop screaming wolf every time some thing that is related to science is mentioned on slashdot.
You realize you're talking to zealots, right? I don't think "please" is going to cover it.