Slashdot | Scientist Says Most Scientific Papers Are Wrong: "An anonymous reader writes 'According to epidemiologist John Ioannidis, the majority of published scientific papers are wrong. If Ioannidis's own paper is right, a randomly chosen scientific paper has less than a 50% chance of being true. He also says that many papers may only be accurate measures of the prevailing bias among scientists. However, a senior editor of a scientific journal says that scientists are already aware of this: 'When I read the literature, I'm not reading it to find proof like a textbook. I'm reading to get ideas. So even if something is wrong with the paper, if they have the kernel of a novel idea, that's something to think about.''"
Shobhna Srivastava said...
There was a 'German' (I am not sure abt the nationality) scientist who published his work and was renowned for it for many year and several people based their research work on his. Till one day a set of 'graduate' students figured out that the data on his paper was 'incorrect'. It caused lot of trouble not just to him but to everyone based on his research.
Heard about it in our 'famous' English class for technical writing why not to conjure data.
But I wonder what about all the reviewers who review the papers? What were they checking on this paper the Grammar?
Shobhna Srivastava said...