“Most of you read the title and thought I was kidding, right? I mean, who in their right mind would give a huge dose of a psychotropic substance to an elephant, just to see what happened? Well, the year was 1962, and someone did just that. And, as icing on the cake, they got a Science paper out of it.” (Retrospectacle)

Are Most Published Research Findings Actually False? “In a 2005 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, epidemiologist John Ioannidis showed that among the 45 most highly cited clinical research findings of the past 15 years, 99 percent of molecular research had subsequently been refuted. Epidemiology findings had been contradicted in four-fifths of the cases he looked at, and the usually robust outcomes of clinical trials had a refutation rate of one in four.

The revelations struck a chord with the scientific community at large: A recent essay by Ioannidis simply entitled ‘Why most published research findings are false’ has been downloaded more than 100,000 times; the Boston Globe called it ‘an instant cult classic.’ Now in a Moebius-strip-like twist, there is a growing body of research that is investigating, analyzing, and suggesting causes and solutions for faulty research.” (Seed)

“Eight weeks ago, Barbara Hillary, a seventy-five-year-old resident of Queens, was on her way to becoming the first African-American woman on record to reach the North Pole.” (New Yorker)