Not sure what big data has to do with this. It is a problem that has always existed. Particularly in the "soft" sciences and biology. Its' certainly not the cas

Not sure what big data has to do with this. It is a problem that has always existed. Particularly in the "soft" sciences and biology. Its' certainly not the case in physics for instance. Big data may bring another dimension to the problem when deep learning will be used in science. However, that's a detail and we're not there yet. The fact that a paper is reproducible or not is not problematic per se. This is not what defines science. The real problem arises when 1/ a big claim/discovery is made in a paper that is not reproducible, 2/ nobody tries to check the results independently, and 3/ the community takes nevertheless the paper seriously and accepts its findings. All this has nothing to do with the use of statistics (unless the whole community makes the exact same errors) or big data.