Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

In the last post I mentioned the epidemiologist John Ioannidis.  I stumbled upon an excellent article about him and his team by David H. Freedman at the Atlantic, Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.  It was written in 2010, and since then Ioannidis has continued to publish critical meta-analsyes, most recently Button et al. (2013).  The first author, Kate Button, has a commentary on the paper at the Guardian, where she vividly describes the research literature as being littered with "bogus or misleading results."

References

Button, K.S., Ioannidis, J.P.A., Mokrysz, C., Nosek, B.A., Flint, J., Robbinson, E.S.J., and Munafo, M.R. (2013):  Power failure:  why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience.  Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14:  365-376.