"Ioannidis's 2005 paper "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"[5] has been the most downloaded technical paper from the journal PLoS Medicine.[8] A profile of his work in this area appears in the November 2010 issue of The Atlantic.[9] The Atlantic article notes Ioannidis analyzed "49 of the most highly regarded research findings in medicine over the previous 13 years". In the paper Ioannidis compared the 45 studies that claimed to have uncovered effective interventions with data from subsequent studies with larger sample sizes: 7 (16%) of the studies were contradicted, 7 (16%) the effects were smaller than in the initial study and 31 (68%) of the studies remained either unchallenged or the findings could not be replicated.[5]
Statisticians Goodman and Greenland agreed that "many medical research findings are less definitive than readers suspect" but disputed his headline claims as unsupportable by the methods used.[10][11] Ioannidis responded to this critique[12] and other researchers have generally supported the general thrust of his findings.[13][14] Ioannidis' work is focused on improving research design standards."
"Ioannidis's 2005 paper "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"[5] has been the most downloaded technical paper from the journal PLoS Medicine.[8] A profile of his work in this area appears in the November 2010 issue of The Atlantic.[9] The Atlantic article notes Ioannidis analyzed "49 of the most highly regarded research findings in medicine over the previous 13 years". In the paper Ioannidis compared the 45 studies that claimed to have uncovered effective interventions with data from subsequent studies with larger sample sizes: 7 (16%) of the studies were contradicted, 7 (16%) the effects were smaller than in the initial study and 31 (68%) of the studies remained either unchallenged or the findings could not be replicated.[5]
Statisticians Goodman and Greenland agreed that "many medical research findings are less definitive than readers suspect" but disputed his headline claims as unsupportable by the methods used.[10][11] Ioannidis responded to this critique[12] and other researchers have generally supported the general thrust of his findings.[13][14] Ioannidis' work is focused on improving research design standards."