Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

[Mike Williams]

http://www.yale.edu/wisay/img/IoannidisArticle.pdf

And some games from Sheffield University

http://www.dcscience.net/?p=193

Ya got to love the net for stuff like this.
Mainstream media often just cannot find the time for interesting stories anymore.

[NoPolys]

Mike;

That's Golden !.... I've seen first hand how some institutions are more interested in the outcome (financial reward) than the science, or the safety and efficacy of medical research chemistry.

At the end of the day, it's probably a good thing we are considered fringe. At least academia laughs and shakes their head... it could be worse.

Cheers

NoPolys

[andrew]

Thanks for that Mike. I am all too aware of the nonsense that goes on in academic politics. What must be remembered is that scientific careers are built on research and without funding there is no research. One of the largest funders of research are government so there is good reason to expect that one way to increase research funding is to scare governments to loosen up their purse strings. Without prejudice, I would contend that the drive to remove CFC's and the current topic de jour "global warming" are two such cases in point. An old scientist one pointed out to me that no one talked about the connection between the ozone hole over Antartica and the fact that Mt Erebus discharged an enormous tonnage of chlorine gas each day. That was apparently an inconvenient fact in the drive to solely lay the blame for the hole size at the feet of man made CFC's.

I have no wish to start a debate on global warming here but I am extremely suspicious of the current computer modelling which supports it but , when fed with appropriate historical data, shows it will never predict a global cooling which have happened in the past. That just simply shows that the model is NOT robust or accurate. Where there is doubt then clearly the scientists do not have a proper handle on the matter. I will not respond to any debate on global warming.

Good science requires that all data is freely available for independent verification. Without that the results MUST be regarded as suspicious. Such appears to be applicable to the case with the Actonel data. What I am saying is that not all scientific papers are suspect. At least we have a way to look closely at that.

[NoPolys]

Andrew;

Here it may be gov't fuding that drives a lot of research. In North America, it's private industry, primarily pharmecuticals and cosmetics in the private universities (numerically the higher number of institutions). Prior to moving here I was part of a private university that was essentially funding their science department on three major legs, Amgen (phramecuticals and clonng) Revlon (cosmetics) and the genome project (partnership of public and private funding). In the publicly funded education sector, this changes with more government driven research funding.

Part of my job description there was the safety and hazmat side of the process..... the only mostly clean & green group were the genome mapping folks. All they really required were massive server and UPS resources... As you indicate, the desire for the appropriate outcomes to fit the research model....... was important. The fear was always if it didn't fit, the funding would go away.

As an aside, my association with that particular organization wasn't very long when I began asking the inconvienient questions .

It's a problem that has existed since science was called alchemy in one form or another in varying degrees. I don't have any answers, just observations from the basement...

Cheers

NoPolys

[horserider]

Bless 'em they were bored

[andrew]

Bless 'em they were bored

You are way too young to join the old farts cynics club.

[Mike Williams]

The media does love a great weather headline though.
http://www.real-science.com/below350-org

[horserider]

Bless 'em they were bored

You are way too young to join the old farts cynics club.