Most Scientists ‘Can’t Replicate Studies by Their Peers’

[Swordsmyth]

Science is facing a “reproducibility crisis” where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, research suggests.
This is frustrating clinicians and drug developers who want solid foundations of pre-clinical research to build upon.
From his lab at the University of Virginia’s Centre for Open Science, immunologist Dr Tim Errington runs The Reproducibility Project, which attempted to repeat the findings reported in five landmark cancer studies.
“The idea here is to take a bunch of experiments and to try and do the exact same thing to see if we can get the same results.”
You could be forgiven for thinking that should be easy. Experiments are supposed to be replicable.
The authors should have done it themselves before publication, and all you have to do is read the methods section in the paper and follow the instructions.
Sadly nothing, it seems, could be further from the truth.

More at: http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=50492#comments

[timosman]

Nobody is excited about doing stuff more than once.

[undergroundrr]

Science is facing a “reproducibility crisis” where more than two-thirds of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, research suggests.
This is frustrating clinicians and drug developers who want solid foundations of pre-clinical research to build upon.
From his lab at the University of Virginia’s Centre for Open Science, immunologist Dr Tim Errington runs The Reproducibility Project, which attempted to repeat the findings reported in five landmark cancer studies.
“The idea here is to take a bunch of experiments and to try and do the exact same thing to see if we can get the same results.”
You could be forgiven for thinking that should be easy. Experiments are supposed to be replicable.
The authors should have done it themselves before publication, and all you have to do is read the methods section in the paper and follow the instructions.
Sadly nothing, it seems, could be further from the truth.

More at: http://www.cryptogon.com/?p=50492#comments

Thanks for posting this. I read the BBC article it was referenced from. This feeds a suspicion I've had for a long time that there's very little science happening in science. There's just a lot of manipulating data sets to reach the policy or marketing goal of wherever the federal or corporate research funding comes from.

It's heart-breaking because I grew up as a space sci-fi nut who revered scientists as the cream of human intellect. I'm constantly trying to find science that isn't marred by corruption and self-deception, and I keep coming up dry.

[angelatc]

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/john-arnold-bad-science

The Reproducibility Project, meanwhile, swelled to include more than 270 researchers working to reproduce 100 psychology experiments - and in August 2015, Nosek revealed its results. Ultimately his army of volunteers could verify the findings of only about 40 per cent of the studies. Media reports declared the field of psychology, if not all of science, to be in a state of crisis. It became one of the biggest science stories of the year.

[dannno]

[CPUd]

I've been coming across this more that I would have liked, and I do contact the authors about it. What usually happens is that they can reproduce their results, but only in a controlled environment that is more explicit than described in the paper. This can actually be helpful, because if you're writing a similar paper, you can cite them and show you are doing something that they didn't cover. Some of them will get extremely defensive and look for others to blame. It is sad because I know quite a few who cite these papers without this level of verification, and I understand the pressure to publish causes them to overlook such details.

[pcosmar]

Bad Science,, Pseudoscience is not new.
science for profit is not new. It is just not honest science.


and Psychiatry is likely the worst.

Phucking with someones mind is rape.. IMO
and abuses in that field are documented,,

Not as well publicized as they should be,, but documented.

[otherone]

I've been coming across this more that I would have liked, and I do contact the authors about it. What usually happens is that they can reproduce their results, but only in a controlled environment that is more explicit than described in the paper. This can actually be helpful, because if you're writing a similar paper, you can cite them and show you are doing something that they didn't cover. Some of them will get extremely defensive and look for others to blame. It is sad because I know quite a few who cite these papers without this level of verification, and I understand the pressure to publish causes them to overlook such details.

[Mach]

If anyone would like to dig way deeper into this topic, have fun, can get very "technical" and repetitive, but does admit openly how people are just playing off of other peoples thought patterns thinking they're being original.... or something like that..... read over the Contents and the Introduction to get an overview.


Thinking Fast and Slow (downloadable)
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-XdUn...ge/n0/mode/2up

[silverhandorder]

I've been coming across this more that I would have liked, and I do contact the authors about it. What usually happens is that they can reproduce their results, but only in a controlled environment that is more explicit than described in the paper. This can actually be helpful, because if you're writing a similar paper, you can cite them and show you are doing something that they didn't cover. Some of them will get extremely defensive and look for others to blame. It is sad because I know quite a few who cite these papers without this level of verification, and I understand the pressure to publish causes them to overlook such details.

Now we know why you so hostile to freedom. You are in academia.

[Peace&Freedom]

Add fake science (non-reproducible results) to fake news (MSM), fake bodies (cosmetic surgery), fake food (GMO-augmented) fake money (Federal Reserve notes), fake friends (social media) etc., and one can see we have a fusillade of fakeness dominating our lives.