Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions - Softcover

Harris, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 154164414X ISBN 13: 9781541644144

Publisher: Basic Books, 2018

Synopsis

"A rewarding read for anyone who wants to know the unvarnished truth about how science really gets done." - Financial Times

American taxpayers spend $30 billion annually funding biomedical research, but over half of these studies can't be replicated due to poor experimental design, improper methods, and sloppy statistics. Bad science doesn't just hold back medical progress, it can sign the equivalent of a death sentence for terminal patients. In Rigor Mortis, Richard Harris explores these urgent issues with vivid anecdotes, personal stories, and interviews with the top biomedical researchers. We need to fix our dysfunctional biomedical system--before it's too late.

About this title

Review:

Named by Amazon as one of their "Best Nonfiction Books of the Month"

"A rewarding read for anyone who wants to know the unvarnished truth about how science really gets done."--Financial Times

"Harris makes a strong case that the biomedical research culture is seriously in need of repair."--Nature

"Rigor Mortis is rife with examples of things that go awry in medical studies, how they happen, and how they can be avoided and fixed. For the most part, academic biomedical scientists are not evil, malicious, or liars at heart."--Ars Technica

"An alarming and highly readable summation of what has been called the 'reproducibility crisis' in science--the growing realization that large swathes of the biomedical literature may be wrong."--Spectrum Magazine

"Rigor Mortis provides an excellent summation of the case for fixing science."--SLATE

"This engaging book will inform and challenge readers who care about the public image of science, the state of peer review, and US funding for science."--Physics Today

"Just as 'post-truth' was selected as the word of the year in 2016 for its political connotations, Richard Harris masterfully shows how this pertains to science, too. Rigor Mortis is a compelling, sobering, and important account of bad biomedical research, and the pressing need to fix a broken culture."
--Eric Topol, Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and author of The Patient Will See You Now

"Science remains the best way to build knowledge and improve health, but as Richard Harris reminds us in Rigor Mortis, it is also carried out by humans subject to 'publish or perish' and other perverse incentives. Tapping into these tensions, Harris deftly weaves gripping tales of sleuthing with possible paths out of what some call a crisis. Read this book if you want to see how biomedical research is reviving itself."--Ivan Oransky, Co-Founder of Retraction Watch and Distinguished Writer In Residence at New York University

"Richard Harris has written an essential guide to how scientific research may arrive at the wrong conclusions. From the 235 ways that scientists can fool themselves to the misuse of statistics and the persistence of unsound research methods, Harris outlines the problems underlying the so-called 'reproducibility crisis' in biomedical research and introduces readers to the people working on solutions."--Christie Aschwanden, lead science writer for FiveThirtyEight and health columnist for the Washington Post

Book Description:

"A rewarding read for anyone who wants to know the unvarnished truth about how science really gets done."--Financial Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 154164414X
• ISBN 13: 9781541644144
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288