Stumble it!Bad Science?
posted in Science, Society by themaiden |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.
New Scientist Breaking News - Most scientific papers are probably wrong
While this report doesn’t really surprise me, nor does it dent my confidence in the scientific method, I am quite sure the anti-science religious right will hop on this band wagon in their efforts to get theology thrown into school.
In short, this is how science is supposed to work. What? Science is supposed to give results that are more than half wrong? No. Nor is that the implications of the report. A critical component of science is replication, and this is mentioned in the article. Those who developed what is now know as the scientific method knew some things about people. They knew that people make mistakes and they knew that people make ‘mistakes’ on purpose. They also knew that technology changes and that the available information about a subject changes. Consequently, included in the scientific method is the idea of replication. One person may be dishonest or incompetent. Two or three people or a hundred may also have those traits, but a hundred people will no be dishonest and/or incompetent in the same way. That is, false results– those that are the result of error or fraud– will not replicate over and over. Those that doen’t replicate, don’t count. Simple, really.
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