Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005)

There is at least one thing wrong about this. This is an essay about a paper published a simulation based scenarios in medical research. It then try to generalize to "research" and avoid this very narrow support to the claim. I think this is something true and it should make us more cautious when deciding based on single studies. But things are different in other fields. Also this is called research. You don't know the answer before head. You have…

This was a very controversial paper when it was published, perhaps because of its incendiary title. But the paper is much more subtle than the title suggests. Basically the idea is that if you try to test phenomena that are completely unexpected, your prior odds are low, so even if you get a positive result, there is a good chance the result is incorrect. So there is a danger that by trying to ensure more correct results, scientists may avoid…

I read this a few years ago. It such an important topic. Billions of dollars have been spent doing research in fields like nutrition and psychology with very little ROI.