Robert Lee Hotz wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week about medical scholar John Ioannidis who calculates that most published research findings are wrong.
Hotz writes:
"Dr. Ioannidis ... has documented how, in thousands of peer-reviewed research papers published every year, there may be so much less than meets the eye.These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study design or self-serving data analysis. "There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims," Dr. Ioannidis said. "A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true."
The hotter the field of research the more likely its published findings should be viewed skeptically, he determined.
If only we could raise the level of skepticism and scrutiny among more journalists - some of whom wait to publish any finding from any journal or any scientific meeting as if it were gospel.