The Godfather of uncovering bad research, especially in health care, is John Ioannidis at Standford University. Some time ago he wrote a paper pointing out the scale of fraudulent and erroneous research, saying that at least half of all published research was simply wrong. His focus is on medical and health care papers, but the same is undoubtedly true in most areas. Bad design, bad methodology, bad statistics, ignoring obvious sources of bias and so on. In health care this matters. We need research that we can trust in regard to treatments, but Ioannidis points out that most health care interventions have no good quality evidence to support their efficacy. He describes a number of other issues with health care, including excessive diagnoses and disease creep, much of which is driven by drug companies and clinicians trying to persuade people they are sick and need treatment.
Read this article if you want to understand why health care in particular has a research crisis. (Ioannidis Article)
