"All Scientific Papers are Wrong."
... will be the headline when this essay from the editorial of PLoS Medicine winds up in the mainstream-mainstream media. It is already entitled Why Most Published Research Findings Are False and quoted as Most scientific papers are probably wrong by the New Scientist.
The work from John Ioannaidis, an epidemiologist at the university of Ioannina in Greece will stir some controversy and will be water on the mills of the quacks. The paper appears solid but most readers with some statistics experience won't be surprised, let alone experimentalists dealing with interpretation of results of complex experiments.
Does this editorial really say something that is novel and that has to pronounced as dramatic? Not that we should bar any scientific work that is peer-reviewed (are the editorials peer-reviewed?) from publication but does it really need a title like that?
On the other hand, a lot of research is sold as if the cure for cancer is just around a corner and a dose of scientific reality certainly won't hurt.
[Thanks, gruggled]
The work from John Ioannaidis, an epidemiologist at the university of Ioannina in Greece will stir some controversy and will be water on the mills of the quacks. The paper appears solid but most readers with some statistics experience won't be surprised, let alone experimentalists dealing with interpretation of results of complex experiments.
Does this editorial really say something that is novel and that has to pronounced as dramatic? Not that we should bar any scientific work that is peer-reviewed (are the editorials peer-reviewed?) from publication but does it really need a title like that?
On the other hand, a lot of research is sold as if the cure for cancer is just around a corner and a dose of scientific reality certainly won't hurt.
[Thanks, gruggled]
spitshine - 2005-08-30 12:15