Research reliability Quotes

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

When we routinely fail to produce the new knowledge policy makers desperately need, they lose confidence in us. Who can blame them? Smart guesses aren’t worth spit.

A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.

If all people are unique, and if they are constantly changing each and every day, then all one can say about any social research finding is that it applied to that group of people on that given day, and given the propensity of humans to be different and to change, then it is unlikely that one would get the same results if one were to repeat the study.

Error is far more common than fraud which probably comprises 1 percent or a tenth of a percent of the literature.

Measurements, observations, descriptions can only be considered scientific when they are independently confirmed by other people.

Here's a news flash: scientists can be wrong. That's no big deal (unless the scientist is you), since research is self-correcting. Consequently, most errors by scientists become historical curiosities, with little long-term importance.

Poll results published with a clear byline for the research reflect a higher degree of confidence in the survey.

[Discussing economic trends:] You can find a study that says anything.

I have spent too long being able to manipulate the answers I want from market research to rely upon its findings any more than I do weather forecasts.

We've learned from experience that the truth will out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in Cargo Cult Science.