JAMES JOYNER: Scientific Research Is Unreliable, Unreliable Scientists Report. “The problem, unfortunately, is getting worse rather than better. The use of statistics to make academic research, even in ‘soft’ fields like psychology and political science, more ‘scientific’ has become the norm over the last half century. Unfortunately, most of us in those fields—and for that matter, most chemists, physicists, and physicians—don’t truly understand the increasingly complicated statistics we’re employing. That is, we roughly understand what they’re supposed to do but not the math behind them. And that makes us oblivious to errors.”