FromĀ The Lown Institute: Every year, weĀ spend $240 billionĀ to fund biomedical research. According to a science reporter and author Richard Harris, as much as half of the biomedical research we fund is infected with reckless practice and bias.
“‘Cutthroat academic competition, a headlong rush to publish in high-impact journals, and scarce funding all lead researchers to cut corners, and the self-correcting mechanisms of science canāt keep up,’ writesĀ Lown Institute vice presidentĀ Shannon BrownleeĀ in aĀ review of Harrisā bookĀ in theĀ Washington Monthly.
This pattern of careless scientific practices has created a crisis of ‘irreproducibility’ ā few results of these studies can be reproduced, which calls their accuracy into question. And when more studies are conducted based on the results of flawed studies, it creates ‘the data equivalent of a house of cards,’ writes Brownlee.”
