Published in:
01-01-2014 | What's New in Intensive Care
Research accomplishments that are too good to be true
Author:
John P. A. Ioannidis
Published in:
Intensive Care Medicine
|
Issue 1/2014
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Excerpt
We are all proud of successes in scientific research. Society at large expects to reap great benefits from these breakthroughs. However, sometimes research accomplishments are just too good to be true: single studies with extravagant results, investigators with too spectacular sudden changes in their career trajectory, or even whole scientific fields where exaggeration becomes a spurious norm. The boundaries between these three levels are hazy, because multiple single studies build investigator CVs and multiple investigators build scientific fields. How do we differentiate spurious success from true excellence? Let us examine a few vignettes of different situations. …