, Columnist
Artificial Intelligence Should Help Vet New Research
Peer review is the gold standard for scientific papers, but maybe there’s a better system just around the corner.
Mind your p (values) and q’s.
Illustration by Christine Vanden ByllaardtThis article is for subscribers only.
Have you ever heard that reading literature for three minutes makes people more empathetic, or that holding a heavier clipboard makes a manager more likely to hire a job candidate? The popular press has had a love affair with social science findings like these. But they might not be true.
Attempts to replicate such results led to a shocking discovery in 2015 that fewer than 40% of papers in peer-reviewed psychology journals could be verified. Similarly dismal findings occurred in economics and some biomedical research, including cancer biology.