> Is the scientific method, or more generally modern science and how it is distributed to those outside the field, so poorly designed that not disclosing ties i

> Is the scientific method, or more generally modern science and how it is distributed to those outside the field, so poorly designed that not disclosing ties invalidates what was communicated? Basically, yeah. There's the famous replication crisis, and of course p-hacking. There's also the forking garden problem, e.g. in: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/p_hacking.pdf http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/p_... Put it like this: If you're motivated to reach a certain conclusion in the soft sciences, odds are that you're going to find it. (But not that other researchers who come after you will find the same thing.)