I don't think that we should abandon the scientific method or distort the scientific method so as to give a message that science is perfect. It's a very difficult endeavor, it's fighting and struggling with errors and biases on a daily basis. Unless we are accurate about our level of uncertainty, I think we will run into trouble. You can have just a single paper that got it wrong, like Lancet publishing a paper that MMR vaccines cause autism. And then you have hundreds of millions of people who don't want to vaccinate their children. We're heading back to the Middle Ages. The problem started from getting it wrong and not having a message that we could get it wrong.
John Ioannidis of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his research on the reliability of published research findings. They discuss Ioannidis's recent study on bias in economics research, meta-analysis, the challenge of small sample analysis, and the reliability of statistical significance as a measure of success in empirical research.