Publish and be wrong

October 9, 2008 - 6:45pm — Bibliofuture

One group of researchers thinks headline-grabbing scientific reports are the most likely to turn out to be wrong

See: http://nonstopbooks.blogspot.com/2008/10/publish-and-be-wrong.html

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Comments

October 14, 2008 - 12:06pm — opaqueentity

I think it's not necesarily the scientists fault

A lot of it is the media, press agencies and people out for a different story.
Depends on what we're talking about but a lot of the time someones work could be misrepresented or especially misunderstood.
All it takes is a publicity department or someone eager for a good news story to jump on a tiny part of someones work and hype it up.

If you have a couple of pretty pictures or old people or little children with some disease, it's a lot more interesting that a heavy description of a piece of theoretical science that someone is working on.
Might only happen occasionally but it does happen. Science modified for the masses but not published for that market is something I see now and again.

Though if we're talking about Cold Fusion or Segways I totally agree ;)