With Humanities Highlights, Himmelfarb staff aims to spotlight useful books from our Humanities collection. This week, we’re showcasing “Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions,” by NPR science-journalist Richard Harris.
About the Book:
Applying his decades of journalistic experience to the “reproducibility crisis” - a term coined to describe the difficulty in replicating large amounts of published science - Richard Harris interviews many key figures attempting to improve the standards of science. Chapter by chapter, he analyzes factors of the crisis such as human error (reporting only what works, not doing double blind experiments, refusal to comply with fact checkers), sample sizes determined by budget, experiments that use only one cell line, test animal problems, a culture that incentives publication speed over accuracy, debunked facts circulating like ghost ships, and more.
Part compendium of errors, part call to action, “Rigor Mortis” is an eye-opening account of the last couple decades of scientific rigor.
Reasons to Read:
If you’re looking for a balanced, outsider’s take on the subject, Harris does an excellent job presenting arguments and counter-arguments. For example, he discusses both Brian Nosek’s Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, which attempted to replicate 50 published attention-gathering papers, and the criticism of the project from Robert Weinberg, one of the lead scientists of the chosen studies (Harris, 2017, pg. 159).
Despite the aggressive (and somewhat hyperbolic) title, Harris writes with a sense of concern that never feels disparaging. If you’re looking for a broader look at the issue, the extensive interview range presents a fuller picture than many of the articles out there.
Reasons to Avoid:
If you’re already familiar with the issue, “Rigor Mortis” could prove depressing.
Although science self-corrects, and although Harris presents improvements across the board (and emphasizes how many of them would be cost effective), the road ahead seems long, and the weight of culture change seems daunting.
Further Reading:
- The C. Glenn Begley pieces about the Reproducibility crisis mentioned in chapter one: “Raise standards for preclinical cancer research” and his followup, “Six Red Flags for Suspect Work.”
- Nigel Hawkes’ BMJ article: “Most Laboratory Cancer Studies Cannot Be Replicated, Study Shows.”
- John P. A. Loannidis’ Plos Medicine article: “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”
References:
Harris, Richard. (2017). Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions. Basic Books.
