Consensus science.
Chronicle still hasn’t released a free version of the bad news about consensus science, but a brief quote may be permissible:
While the public remains relatively unaware of the problem, it is now a truism in the scientific establishment that many preclinical biomedical studies, when subjected to additional scrutiny, turn out to be false. Many researchers believe that if scientists set out to reproduce preclinical work published over the past decade, a majority would fail. This, in short, is the reproducibility crisis.
The NIH, if it was at first reluctant to consider the problem, is now taking it seriously.
This scandal, of course, is where consensus gets us: Everyone is wrong for all the right reasons.
Incidentally, we also happened on, from NIH’s own site last August:
As you may know from recent news reports, there have been lapses in safety practices at federal laboratories involving potentially lethal microbes such as avian flu (H5N1) and anthrax, including an incident involving discovery of 60-year old smallpox vials in an FDA laboratory building located on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus in Bethesda, MD. Such lapses, which undermine public confidence in biomedical research and could put people’s health at risk, remind us of the need for constant attention to biosafety standards.
Scientists can never become complacent in routine safety practices—one mistake could have serious repercussions.
See also: Featured in an article, Amid a Sea of False Findings, the NIH Tries Reform?
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