>> But I'd be careful about drawing conclusions until we see replication.
>> This comment is more applicable to what one reads in ABJ than it is to studies published in one of the "Nature" journals.

Is that meant to be funny? This was just published in the journal Nature:

Challenges in irreproducible research

Science moves forward by corroboration – when researchers verify others’ results. Science advances faster when people waste less time pursuing false leads. No research paper can ever be considered to be the final word, but there are too many that do not stand up to further study.

There is growing alarm about results that cannot be reproduced. Explanations include increased levels of scrutiny, complexity of experiments and statistics, and pressures on researchers. Journals, scientists, institutions and funders all have a part in tackling reproducibility. Nature has taken substantive steps to improve the transparency and robustness in what we publish, and to promote awareness within the scientific community. We hope that the articles contained in this collection will help.

07 October 2015

* * *

“Ever since I first learned about confirmation bias I’ve been seeing it everywhere.” So said British author and broadcaster Jon Ronson in So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (Picador, 2015).

Nature special collection: reproducibility

You will see a lot of cognitive bias in this week’s Nature. In a series of articles, we examine the impact that bias can have on research, and the best ways to identify and tackle it. One enemy of robust science is our humanity — our appetite for being right, and our tendency to find patterns in noise, to see supporting evidence for what we already believe is true, and to ignore the facts that do not fit.

Finding the best ways to keep scientists from fooling themselves has so far been mainly an art form and an ideal. The time has come to make it a science. We need to see it everywhere.

Nature 526, 163 (08 October 2015) doi:10.1038/526163a

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