Re:What I Have Learned About Health and Fitness
by jerf on Wednesday March 17, 2010 @04:09PM
(#1199528)
Coincidentally, this just came up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1199230 It is almost exactly what I mean. Unfortunately, if the results are sufficiently bad there's actually no salvaging the science; meta-analysis can improve things but still requires good data to start with.
Recently a paper went by on how something like 90% of medical studies are not able to be replicated in follow-up studies. If you really understand science qua science (as opposed to science-as-religion-substitute), you should understand this isn't a minor interesting tidbit to be discarded, this is a dagger to the heart of the field. Other fields seem to be having similar problems.
I reiterate, science is still the best we've got and I don't anticipate a replacement. But the evidence strongly suggests that the quality of the real science being done is a lot lower than it may appear at first glance, or what some people would have you believe.