[nsainsbury]

Yes, absolutely this.

I don't think many people outside of academia truly understand how much scientific research has degraded over the years.

There are an extremely small number of fields in which the overall quality is still quite high (mathematics, etc.) but overwhelmingly the social sciences, medical science, etc. are wastelands of p-hacked, low-N, biased, poorly designed studies that can't be replicated (not to mention the outright frauds and absolutely rampant plagiarism).

Every intelligent person should be deeply, deeply skeptical of papers published in particular fields over the last ~20 years.

[robotresearcher]

> I don't think many people outside of academia truly understand how much scientific research has degraded over the years.

150 years ago we had phlogiston alongside Maxwell on electromagnetism. Science is always a mixture of more and less wrong stuff. It's people doing work, for good reasons and bad reasons. Some of them are crazy, some are corrupt, and many are doing their best in good faith.

Unless you think we had a special good period in, say, the twentieth century that we've retreated from. It did seem to be an acceleration.

But there's at least some pretty amazing biotech going on this century.

I think most every activity sector has the phenomenon that 80-90% of the people/companies in it are a pointless waste of time and money. It's the price we pay for the 10-20% treasure.

[p-e-w]

> 150 years ago we had phlogiston alongside Maxwell on electromagnetism.

First, phlogiston theory was considered obsolete by the late 1700s, so you're off by a couple of decades.

Second, that's not even remotely comparable. While phlogiston theory is incorrect, at the time it was first proposed it seemed as good a guess as any other, and remained a viable explanation for how combustion worked until experiments proved it wrong. What's happening today is that respected researchers at reputable institutions publish results that they know are wrong or statistically meaningless, in order to game the academic system towards awarding them greater respect and influence. The problem is fraud, not ignorance.

[robotresearcher]

What's the basis to believe that this is worse now than other times in history, or on average?

I strongly suspect there's a survival bias, where the past fraudulent and otherwise incorrect stuff is forgotten in favor of the great stuff. So it always feels like today is the worst time ever.

[thrown_22]

> What's the basis to believe that this is worse now than other times in history, or on average?

We produce more science now than ever before. If you have 10 scientists and 9 of them produce rubbish it won't take you long to read a paper from the one who doesn't.

If you have 10,000,000 and 9,000,000 produce rubbish you can spend a thousands lifetimes reading nothing but rubbish.

[resource0x]

> There are an extremely small number of fields in which the overall quality is still quite high (mathematics, etc.)

What do you mean by "etc."? Do you have another example?

[rob_c]

I'm sorry but I have to interject here,

Social science != Science. (OK I over-react but come on, the field seems barely literate in statistical methods last I looked, i.e. mean != average for all cases)

Medical science has a massive reproducibility problem largely brought on by the demands and pressures of industry funding.

Chemistry is still allowing us to make better turbine blades for jet engines and Physics is still explaining the weird world of quantum mechanics.

Just because some fields can't keep their facts and figures straight we shouldn't tar the whole of "scientific research" with the same brush.

[mistrial9]

with the dizzying speed, complexity and volumes of reference materials, the single word "degraded" does not have enough descriptive power to start to be interesting. Its just so much more of everything, so much faster, plus all the factors named here.

[kuhewa]

This comment would have been more apt a decade ago, but we've already seen a substantial correction and changes to the 'rules' in response to the replication crisis. There's an explosion in the amount of shite published in garbage tier predatory journals but most of that is noise that isn't making it into any decisionmaking