[capnrefsmmat]

Not necessarily true. Ioannidis did a review of 49 studies cited more than 1,000 times in the medical literature -- prime candidates for being replicated or tested by future results. Of those,

- 16% were found by later studies to be wrong

- 16% were found to have exaggerated the size of effects they claimed to detect

- 44% were replicated, and

- 24% were unchallenged and unreplicated by later literature.

So a full quarter of incredibly prominent research was never tested.

Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2005). Contradicted and initially stronger effects in highly cited clinical research. JAMA, 294(2), 218–228. doi:10.1001/jama.294.2.218

[epistasis]

Thank you for a very informative and helpful reply! However, I would like to see this work validated before I fully accept his conclusions.

Regarding the 24%, if you look in Table 2 of that study, of the 12 that were "unchallenged and unreplicated", the notes for 10 list follow on studies that would reveal problems with the initial study, were the initial study to be "wrong."

That leaves 4% that are "unchallenged and unreplicated" yet have 1000 citations. So I would be quite interested to know the take of the researchers in the field on those papers, and if they would agree with Ioannidis' assessment on those 2 papers.