August 31, 2005
Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong
Posted at August 31, 2005 1:45 PM
This story I read in newscientist.com reminds me of my Computer Science 210 professor. Upon discovering an error in our text book, the 119 year old professor said, "Never listen to text books." He then proceeded to show us the correct way for the next 45 minutes. When he got to the end he said, "oh shit, this isn't right. Another lesson learned here is never listen to professors."
Most scientific papers are probably wrong
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.
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