The Rabbit Hole: The War on Bad Science (by Jeremy Radcliffe)

The scientific literature underpinning medical decisions, nutrition advice, and psychological treatments may be substantially compromised. Not by occasional bad papers, but by a system where the incentives reward publication over accuracy and where review processes fail to catch fundamental flaws. The consequence is that we're building policy, medicine, and public health guidance on findings that likely don't hold up to scrutiny.

• Most published research findings are probably false. Economist John Ioannidis demonstrated this in 2005, yet the problem persists and has only become more visible as researchers attempt to replicate major studies and fail.

• The mechanism isn't individual dishonesty but systemic design. Journals profit from volume. Researchers advance careers through publication counts. Nobody has aligned incentives around whether findings are actually true.

• You don't need peer review to influence millions. A journalist with a fraudulent study about chocolate aiding weight loss reached a global audience without anyone catching it beforehand, revealing how easily bad science gets amplified.

• Some journals will publish literally anything if you pay the right fee. Predatory open-access operations accept papers with obvious methodological failures, turning the peer-review process into pure theater.

• The question isn't whether bad science exists but how much policy, medicine, and personal health decisions rest on foundations that won't replicate. When the evidence itself becomes unreliable, what gets rebuilt first?