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Matt Cook's avatar

Isn’t it the peer review process that installs referees with an ax to grind, who then censor papers that disagree with their life’s body of work?

And high government role in funding research, leading to all funding going to the mainstream beliefs?

And total capture by Big Pharma in the case of health and medicine.

I read papers every day and the old ones were much better. They had a clear theory that was tested, and the results were clear. Often they were done with one or two investigators, not 50 or 100.

The new studies are huge and funded by outside parties (Big Pharma) that uses statistical sleight-of-hand and are more geared to getting a particular result that will contribute to a new drug or treatment modality.

Most new studies are completely bogus.

I’m not sure if it was you, Eugyppius, who alerted me to the Science magazine investigation that there has been no progress in Alzheimer’s and that the beta amyloid theory is probably bogus, based upon a study with fraudulent findings done in 2003.

https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease

Shocking but this is going on all the time, and is a perfect example of what your essay is talking about.

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Graham Stull's avatar

In my field, economics, the peer review system has been identified as broken for some time, though few have any real ideas what to do about it.

So it shouldn’t have been surprising when, two years ago, virtually en masse, leading academic economists declared that shutting down production would not really have a very negative effect on the economy.

Only a handful foresaw that increasing the money supply while stopping production would lead to out-of-control inflation. No, I’m serious.

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