Posted on 08/30/2005 10:29:44 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.
John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and the public have to be wary of reported findings.
"We should accept that most research findings will be refuted. Some will be replicated and validated. The replication process is more important than the first discovery," Ioannidis says.
In the paper, Ioannidis does not show that any particular findings are false. Instead, he shows statistically how the many obstacles to getting research findings right combine to make most published research wrong.
Massaged conclusions
Traditionally a study is said to be "statistically significant" if the odds are only 1 in 20 that the result could be pure chance. But in a complicated field where there are many potential hypotheses to sift through - such as whether a particular gene influences a particular disease - it is easy to reach false conclusions using this standard. If you test 20 false hypotheses, one of them is likely to show up as true, on average.
Odds get even worse for studies that are too small, studies that find small effects (for example, a drug that works for only 10% of patients), or studies where the protocol and endpoints are poorly defined, allowing researchers to massage their conclusions after the fact.
Surprisingly, Ioannidis says another predictor of false findings is if a field is "hot", with many teams feeling pressure to beat the others to statistically significant findings.
But Solomon Snyder, senior editor at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, US, says most working scientists understand the limitations of published research.
"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," he says.
If I hear one more Darwinist tell me about scientific proof after this Ultra Scientific Journal announces that 50% of all scientific conclusions are wrong, I'll vomit.
Yeah, but physics is a real science. Unfortunately, other "pseudo" sciences ride its coattails to the same level of admiration and acceptance. So when you get an anthropologist holding up a skull fragment and saying this is a 40 million old ancestor of Homo Sapiens, people give him the same credibility as a physicist declaring that a new subatomic particle has been discovered.
"John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece,"
Anyone notice a name similarity here? Is this a good school or is it like "Bob of the Bob School of Medicine and Bartending".
Just askin...
LOL! Any guesses as to the error rate of claims of divine inspiration?
What "Ultra Scientific Journal"? Please tell me you don't mean The New Scientist.
Blush. My literalness index is running high this morning, with 95% confidence.
42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.....
8^)
This is one reason I see science as a quasi-religion. I'm asked to take too much on faith for it to really be science.
I got a better idea, lets bury our heads in the sand and pretend there is no problem with the priesthood. That'll ensure we stay out of the dark ages!!!
Beside, if the Library of Alexandria and all the burnt outposts were brought back, most modern scientists would reject the knowlege contained therein because ancient people can't no way be smarter then us moderns, boy I tell ya!
Everyone in history was a complete idiot until those 19th century scientists saved us from the Dark Ages!!! We can never go against them!!!!!
We use 3-sigma all the time.
It's easy to author superficially credible papers-
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
Ping.
One thing a scientist has to take on faith is that at root the universe formed or was designed to a specific unchanging set of rules and operates consistently on that design, because if it is evolving at a fundamental level it would be really difficult to do science. True scientists believe in ID at that level. Any evolution going on has to be at a derivative level above, like acceleration is the derivative of velocity.
The theory of relativity and quantum mechanics are inconsistent. So at least one of them must be wrong.
Quantum mechanics can't explain gravity, so I'd wager that at a minimum, quantum mechanics is wrong.
The religious-like fervor that so many Ph.D. scientists display in defending the premises of evolution is probably due to the fact that if evolution were itself shown to be a pseudo-science, their diplomas, and indeed their careers, would be considered worthless. They've based their entire careers upon the evolutionary dogma. Of course they're going to attack anyone who questions its validity.
Thanks for the info.
On the other hand.
I dabble in a lot of different areas, sciences, medicine, art and plain old grunt stuff. Every area has its own language.
Sometimes, and this is one, they piss me off. 3-sigma = 1 chance in 400.
Part of the problem.
The Impact of Omniscient Configurations on Algorithms
P Hilton, WJ Clinton and F Flintstone
Abstract
DNS and write-back caches, while significant in theory, have not until recently been considered typical [8]. In fact, few end-users would disagree with the understanding of Internet QoS. In order to fulfill this purpose, we show not only that Scheme and kernels can collaborate to accomplish this mission, but that the same is true for write-ahead loggin
Bump.
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