Special Reports

Sloppy Science Wastes Billions And Is More Rampant Than You Think

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There's a new book that describes just how sloppy science has become. "Rigor Mortis" described how biomedical science suffers from a lack of rigor and that it's resulting to worthless cures and billions of dollars wasted. The claim made by its author Richard Harris is both large and legitimate and here's why.

The government as well as the researchers spend a lot of time and money for drug trials. It's incredibly expensive only to dash hopes of the patients whose lives are at stake. Drug trials, as Ars Technica reported, are based on suggestive findings from researches done in academic labs. But if these findings were flawed, meaning they did not honor science' foundation, which is evidence then the chance that drug trials will fail is exponential.

Science studies should be reproducible to prove its claims for future use, University Herald reported. There is what scientists call a reproducibility crisis in the science industry right now with two thirds of the world's researchers having a hard time reproducing another researcher's sloppy science project or findings. This is what Harris also claims because what's rampant in psychology is also endemic in biomedical science.

Harris impresses that a science study's reproducibility is sacred and admits that most of the breakthrough studies are rarely tested. If people start testing them, they fail. Not only are studies very hard to reproduce by colleagues or people from the same field, most often than not, these studies are similarly difficult to reproduce by the original researchers.

But Harris offers solutions. He says that good institutional practice which is what is practiced in the pharmaceuticals industry should be mandated and implemented. It's also suggested that researchers register their hypotheses in advance, which means they can't lay claim to anything until their data is tested.

The book "Rigor Mortis" is filled with the horrors of flawed medical studies. He also highlighted that scientists are not evil by claiming something they can't reproduce themselves, but are just too curious that their curiosity lead them off the path for the sake of money, which is very much like everyone else.

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