SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In 1996, the an early genomic study found a correlation between variants of the SLC6A4 gene and clinical depression. For years after, researchers wrote paper after paper describing possible mechanisms and more detailed relationships of the gene and depression.
The Atlantic has an article about how a 2005 study using better methods and a larger sample set found no correlation, but researchers continued to treat the original (weak) correlation as a valid basis for further study for years later.
"You would have thought that would have dampened enthusiasm for that particular candidate gene, but not at all," he says. "Any evidence that the results might not be reliable was simply not what many people wanted to hear."
While this may not be the only case of suspect evidence leading to mountains of papers of dubious quality in scientific history, it's certainly a very modern one that raises the question of how far the replication crisis extends into the "hard sciences" rather than just the softer sort.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21 2019, @12:03PM
Medical research isn't even close to a "hard science". In the hard sciences people regularly check each others work and have quantitative models that make precise predictions.
And if you think problems with replication there is a new thing you haven't been paying attention. The cancer reproducibility project spent so much money just trying to figure out what the methods were for the papers they selected that they had to drop half of them (also, others have estimated only about half are reproducible in principle via other methods). Out of the remaining, less than half were reproduced fully. And that is the easy part! The hard part is coming up with correct explanations for the results.
These people are a total black hole, it would be much better to just have them come up with ideas and then flip a coin than continue what they are doing.