Make Science Trustworthy Again
How Fraud and P-hacking Affects Your Health
Most published medical research is wrong, due to three reasons. First, p-hacking: researchers test many hypotheses until one produces a statistically “significant” p-value. Because only the winning result is reported, a finding reached by mere chance is mistaken for truth. Second, sloppy statistics lies and outright fraud: low oversight, prestige incentives, and industry money tempt a minority of scientists to fabricate or massage data, and gatekeepers rarely catch them before publication. Laslty, publication bias skews the literature because journals elevate positive, exciting results while while negative or null results never pass the editor’s desk.