A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors in four of his papers

Re:A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors... by wbillingsley on Monday March 27, 2017 @10:40PM (#13973616)

Of course there are lots. There's a bucket-load of papers get published every year, and sometimes reviewers are in a hurry too and miss things. A miniscule number of papers ever replicated, and replication studies regularly find reproducability rates of less than 50%.

Fortunately, critical thought does not stop at the point of publication. When researchers read each other's papers they (hopefully) do not blindly assume them to be bug-free.

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Re:A researcher's response to people pointing out 150 errors... by comstock on Monday March 27, 2017 @10:50PM (#13973661)

I think there's a general popular misunderstanding of the process of science as it is generally practiced.

A single paper isn't as meaningful as you might think. It's more like an interesting blog post. You might use it as a starting point for your own investigation.

A single paper does not represent "the truth" as we currently understand it. For that you need to have a broad scientific consensus.

You might be able to get a better understanding of that from review papers citing recent advances in the field. Or from attending conferences/reading a broad range of papers yourself.

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