Don’t believe everything you read. It’s a truism no rational person would disagree with. But how does it apply to published scientific research?
When teaching my graduate level lithography class at the University of Texas, I often caution my students about excessive faith in published research. “Half of what is published in the lithography literature is wrong,” I would often say. I have no data to support this claim, but after reading thousands of published papers over the last 23 years I think that number is in the ball park. I’ve recently read a published scientific paper (yes, the irony is thick here) that puts some scientific backing to the claim that most published research is wrong. John P. A. Ioannidis’s paper “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” is fascinating – a must read for anyone involved in research. Published in the peer-reviewed open access journal PLoS Medicine (August, 2005), the paper is slanted towards medical studies, but the principles apply to all of science. When is data sufficiently strong to justify the statement that it supports either the acceptance or rejection of a proposed hypothesis? Most of the time, he claims, the data supports neither statement.
The conclusion? Science definitely moves forward, but a healthy dose of skepticism is justified.