Gareth Leng

This book does an incredible job at exposing the flaws in seemingly "objective" work. My brain kind of spun into a black hole while reading about how papers overwhelmingly report positive results... I wondered about the critiques of those works, and if any did not find this result, and if that was the same as a liar saying that they never tell the truth. One case about a scientist sending fake papers to open access journals to see how many would be accepted did not report on how many fake papers were accepted by non-open access journals (no control group). But other than one or two flaws in methodology that somebody as removed from research as I am can pick up, I thought the book rigorous and at least aware of its biases, if not totally removed from them.

I wish the book focused on physical science research more than biological research. It's easy for me to think that my field is more close to the truth because it's not up to interpretation as much as medical sciences... but I'm sure somebody could shine an exposing light on the field.

It's been years since I've published a paper, 10 to be precise, and I fell out of the research industrial complex due to many of the reasons set forth in this book. I was never going to be a professor at an R1 school, and washed out of the national lab system due to an emotionally abusive supervisor and growing distaste at receiving no mentorship and somehow being able to spring forth "high impact papers" fully formed from my forehead. Hopefully the next generation of scientists will have it better, and also be a little more careful in how they present their results to the world.… (meer)