The estimate that 85% of research is wasted referred only to activities prior to the point of publication. Much waste clearly occurs after publication: from poor access, poor dissemination, and poor uptake of the findings of research.

It’d be really great if the initial studies gave us an accurate summary of things. But they don’t. And so what happens is we waste a lot of money treating millions of patients and doing lots of follow-up studies on other themes based on results that are misleading.”

For Simmons, the steep rise and slow fall of fluctuating asymmetry is a clear example of a scientific paradigm, one of those intellectual fads that both guide and constrain research: after a new paradigm is proposed, the peer-review process is tilted toward positive results. But then, after a few years, the academic incentives shift—the paradigm has become entrenched—so that the most notable results are now those that disprove the theory.

Given the idiosyncrasies of lab practices, that’s a concentrated risk profile. Wait for more labs to repeat the work, or conduct a full lab notebook audit

Academic investigator’s directly or indirectly pressured their labs to publish sensational “best of all experimental” results rather than the average or typical study; The “special sauce” of the author’s lab – how the experiment was done, what serum was used, what specific cells were played with, etc.. – led to a local optimum of activity in the paper that can’t be replicated elsewhere and isn’t broadly applicable; or, Systemically ignoring contradictory data in order to support the lab’s hypothesis, often leading to discounting conflicting findings as technical or reagent failures.