Vast Active Library and Information Science blog. From a recent library science graduate in Wellington, New Zealand. A focus on reference and current awareness tools and issues, especially free, web-based resources.

 
An interesting article on possible problems with the accuracy of scientific journal articles. New Scientist reports a study which uses statistical analysis to show that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any given scientific paper are true.

While I don't have the scientific knowledge to argue this one, I would have thought that this is why we place an importance on replicability, and on meta-analysis. The probability that many papers which give the same result are all wrong is vanishingly small.

The original article, by John Ionaddis, is in Public Library of Science: Medicine.

| posted by Simon at 9:05 pm