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Most academic researchers (https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a) believe that we're facing a phenomenon called the "r
by SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
Most academic researchers (https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a) believe that we're facing a phenomenon called the "reproducibility crisis" or "replication crisis", where experimental papers regularly get published even though the experiment does not work as described. This leads to more general doubts about the quality of papers in general - if you know you can't trust that experiments will reproduce, should you trust that survey data is accurate or that analyses are correct?
- mhh__ 5y agoThat isn't the point I was making. The replication crisis is a real problem, but what I am objecting to is the far more serious allegation that overall the quality of academic research is dropping. Science is very very difficult, a journal will try to only publish things it thinks are true however papers (especially in the more informal channels some journals have/less prestigious journals) which are merely interesting or could-be-right are published all the time. That mostly isn't a bad thing - something has to be published properly to be considered properly and fleshed out, dead ends are still ends.