This reminds me of a talk I watched about research into human pheromones. The speaker talked about how literature and studies on pheromones all lead back to 1

This reminds me of a talk I watched about research into human pheromones. The speaker talked about how literature and studies on pheromones all lead back to 1 or 2 old studies that were basically considered bunk, but researchers kept citing it, and other researchers would also cite the other studies that linked back to the original low-quality studies. His point was that the whole field of research into human pheromones needs to blow away all the literature up to this point and start over because the whole thing is so tainted, and few are willing to actually make sense of what's true or false with what currently exists because so much of it is self-referential. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that there are other areas of science that border on needing to start from scratch. EDIT: I believe it may have been this talk, but I don't have time to scan the whole thing just yet. It looks like he begins talking about the problematic research after ~17 minutes. It's still worth watching none the less: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLENtzBbXdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLENtzBbXdY