Why Most Published Research Findings are Still False, and Why You Should Care
Abstract
Why do we use the same word, statistics, for numbers put out by the government and the science of applied probability? This question turns out to have a very interesting answer, one that sheds light on attitudes toward quants.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Things have not improved regarding the falsity of published findings.
“apparently, things have not improved (Brown, 2025)”
From Adding a simple log to in-text citations to strengthen information literacy and argumentation while blocking casual misuse of generative AI (2026) · cites this paper as Brown, 2025
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Tamas, P., & Kamminga, L. (2026) · Journal of Information Literacy · doi:10.11645/20.1.847
- Authors
- Brown, A.
- Affiliations
- New York University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Brown, Aaron
- Venue
- Pan Pacific Symposium
- Publisher
- Surface Mount Technology Association
- Published
- 2025-01
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-3
- ISSN
- 3067-851X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4416885344
- Cited by
- 0
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Pan Pacific Symposium (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Probability and Statistical Research
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistics Education and Methodologies
- Keywords
- replication crisis, false positives, statistical significance, research credibility, applied probability, official statistics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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