Stop ignoring misconduct : Efforts to reduce irreproducibility in research must also tackle...

http://www.nature.com/news/stop-ignoring-misconduct-1.20498

excerpt:

 

I would argue reproducing research does not fully deal with faulty research practices as commonly understood. The two are not synonymous. Its about bias. Bias can be intrinsic to study design, or involve issues with instrumentation, or human action, or a great many things. Bias may also not be perceptible, and what seems like good research practices may be intrinsically biased but this might not be obvious to start with.

Science needs better methodology, for sure, especially in disciplines like psychiatry where the difficulty of the subject matter has led to a permissive attitude towards methodology.

This is a deep complex subject, and it involves evidence based medicine and its failures, failures in medical education and culture, the bureaucratization of medicine, pharma doing research on their own products, acceptance of unscientific practices in medicine because of medical culture, and so on. Bias is always possible, systems need to be in place to minimize bias from all causes, not just the easy targets.