ANNALS OF SCIENCE
THE TRUTH WEARS OFF
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer
SNIP
But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology. In the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only antipsychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants: Davis has a forthcoming analysis demonstrating that the efficacy of antidepressants has gone down as much as threefold in recent decades.
IMHO, until we get rid of NIH, etc. and return the money to the states for research we will continue to have these problems. The university administrations are bloated because of the overhead, >45%, and only consider NIH type grants for promotion if they will own up to it. Researchers are tied to the good ole boy system of making their grants fit the whatever is popular with the in crowd and are not using the “chance favors the prepared mind” approach that has worked for centuries. The NIH, CDC are spending much of the money themselves on intramural research so if you want what’s left you have to play the game. BAD FOR SCIENCE and the public.
There are many talented researchers that loose their jobs yearly because of the grant game and we are loosing their research which may be the key to the cure for X. They made the mistake of telling the truth, my experiment didn’t work. Keep the money home and state fund the universities to do their own research and free the minds of the researchers and insist on American students instead of foreign students.