Science is supposed to be an unbiased way to uncover nature’s secrets. Through blinded experiments, rigorous peer review and replication – we’ve been told that by using the scientific method we’ll find trustworthy facts. But, with many scientific findings largely regarded as ‘wrong’, is science broken? To find out, science journalist Wendy Zukerman speaks to Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Prof. Ivan Oransky, Prof. Barton Zwiebach, Ass. Prof. Alex Holcombe and Dr Alice Williamson.

As a quick clarifying point, in our discussion on statistics we mention that a 95 per cent confidence interval means that 1 in 20 individual findings are wrong. The word 'findings' here means individual experiments, not publications.

More information

Believe it or not: how much can we rely on published data on potential drug targets? http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n9/full/nrd3439-c1.html

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

False-Positive Psychology - Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant

(The Wiggle’ s Study) http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/11/1359.full