[Irtalk] Combating bad science: Metaphysicians | The Economist

[Hilton Gibson]

“WHY most published research findings are false” is not, as the title of an
academic paper, likely to win friends in the ivory tower. But it has
certainly influenced people (including journalists at The Economist). The
paper it introduced was published in 2005 by John Ioannidis, an
epidemiologist who was then at the University of Ioannina, in Greece, and
is now at Stanford. It exposed the ways, most notably the overinterpreting
of statistical significance in studies with small sample sizes, that
scientific findings can end up being irreproducible—or, as a layman might
put it, wrong.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21598944-sloppy-researchers-beware-new-institute-has-you-its-sights-metaphysicians
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