The Journal of Irreproducible Results

Kevin Kirby · Aug 7, 2007

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After reading Craig's submission on tin-foil radio-wave blockers, this reminded me of a few of the "research" articles I read during my days browsing through the bowels of the University of Calfornia Davis library in 1975-79, reading the latest issue of one of my favorite journals of the time, the Journal of Irreproducible Results http://www.jir.com/geographic.html .....one of the best "scientific journals" ever!

Robertisaacs · Aug 8, 2007

Great link! i'd never seen that magazine before. Subscription just went on my Christmas list. Thanks Kevin

Regards
Robert

Robertisaacs · Aug 9, 2007

From the very fine journal mentioned above.

I offer this in recognition of all the time i spent as a student staring at motion graphs in absolute incomprehension. I was in my second year before i realised they were'nt the same as those magic eye 3d picture things.

If only i'd had this!

drsarbes · Aug 9, 2007

I checked out Journal of Irreproducible Results........this is MY kind of Publication!!!!! I can't believe I've never heard of it!
I loved the spell checker poem..........Priceless. I hope eye didn't miss pell anything hear!
Thanks again for the link.

DrSArbes

NewsBot · Jun 11, 2015

Irreproducible biology research costs put at $28 billion per year

BEN-HUR · Jun 12, 2015

NewsBot said: ↑

Irreproducible biology research costs put at $28 billion per year
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John Ioannidis (professor of medicine at Stanford University... above article cites him as an epidemiologist) has been quite popular of late (including on Podiatry Arena) hasn't he? ... The Certainty of Uncertainty in Medicine

Irreproducible biology research costs put at $28 billion per year:
John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University in California who studies scientific robustness, says that the analysis is sure to prompt discussion about the problem — but should be taken with a pinch of salt, given that its estimates carry great uncertainty.

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:rolleyes:... interesting dilemma... the certainty of uncertainty of uncertainty :confused:...

Irreproducible biology research costs put at $28 billion per year:
Freedman and his colleagues defined irreproducibility broadly, as being any errors or omissions that prevent attempts to replicate experimental findings. The researchers sought to determine the relative contributions of four sources of irreproducibility identified in an earlier analysis2: study design; laboratory protocols; biological reagents and reference materials; and data analysis and reporting...

Overall, the team found that poor materials made the largest contribution to reproducibility problems, at 36%, followed by study design at 28% and data analysis at 26%. The team estimates the overall rate of irreproducibility at 53%, but cautions that the true rate could be anywhere between 18% and 89%. That puts the potential economic cost of irreproducibility anywhere from $10 billion to $50 billion per year.

“The four categories are decent, but the estimates are off,” says Ioannidis. “I would put a much higher rate on the data analysis and reporting component.”
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It would be interesting to know what specific fields (of study) they were assessing & which ones were the most affected (or should that be... infected)... one evident bankrupt premise has done its bit to taint quite a few fields... fortunately the empirical (observable, reproducible) science has kept its evolution at bay!

BEN-HUR · Oct 13, 2015

There are a few threads if this ilk (i.e. The Certainty of Uncertainty in Medicine)... yet I figured the following article/paper is best posted here.

The following is an interesting Nature article:

How scientists fool themselves ? and how they can stop (http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-fool-themselves-and-how-they-can-stop-1.18517)

Humans are remarkably good at self-deception. But growing concern about reproducibility is driving many researchers to seek ways to fight their own worst instincts.
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It's a longish article... & whilst the tone of such topics may sometimes seem bleak/disconcerting... the end result I found potentially uplifting & optimistic for the future of enlightenment & science...

Failure to understand our own biases has helped to create a crisis of confidence about the reproducibility of published results, says statistician John Ioannidis, co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. The issue goes well beyond cases of fraud. Earlier this year, a large project that attempted to replicate 100 psychology studies managed to reproduce only slightly more than one-third2. In 2012, researchers at biotechnology firm Amgen in Thousand Oaks, California, reported that they could replicate only 6 out of 53 landmark studies in oncology and haematology3. And in 2009, Ioannidis and his colleagues described how they had been able to fully reproduce only 2 out of 18 microarray-based gene-expression studies4.

Although it is impossible to document how often researchers fool themselves in data analysis, says Ioannidis, findings of irreproducibility beg for an explanation. The study of 100 psychology papers is a case in point: if one assumes that the vast majority of the original researchers were honest and diligent, then a large proportion of the problems can be explained only by unconscious biases. ?This is a great time for research on research,? he says. ?The massive growth of science allows for a massive number of results, and a massive number of errors and biases to study. So there's good reason to hope we can find better ways to deal with these problems.?

?When crises like this issue of reproducibility come along, it's a good opportunity to advance our scientific tools,? says Robert MacCoun, a social scientist at Stanford. That has happened before, when scientists in the mid-twentieth century realized that experimenters and subjects often unconsciously changed their behaviour to match expectations. From that insight, the double-blind standard was born.
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The following infograph is a summary of the issues involved...

The solutions

In every one of these traps, cognitive biases are hitting the accelerator of science: the process of spotting potentially important scientific relationships. Countering those biases comes down to strengthening the 'brake': the ability to slow down, be sceptical of findings and eliminate false positives and dead ends.

?Science is an ongoing race between our inventing ways to fool ourselves, and our inventing ways to avoid fooling ourselves.?

One solution that is piquing interest revives an old tradition: explicitly considering competing hypotheses, and if possible working to develop experiments that can distinguish between them. This approach, called strong inference, attacks hypothesis myopia head on. Furthermore, when scientists make themselves explicitly list alternative explanations for their observations, they can reduce their tendency to tell just-so stories.
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NewsBot · Jun 6, 2016

Is there a reproducibility crisis in biomedical science? No, but there is a reproducibility problem

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