Thread by @Rob_Briner

A thought experiment from @YiannisGabriel: "Imagine that 80% of all research outputs in the social sciences produced in the last five years was destroyed without trace. Would the world in any meaningful way be a worse place?"

HT @andre_spicer

It is this huge chunk of "meaningless clutter", that, in part, makes it so difficult for scientific evidence to usefully help inform practice in fields such as #HR, #Management, #Workpsychology and many others.

In my exitement I forgot to link to the orignal post from @YiannisGabriel - yiannisgabriel.com/2020/01/the-do…

And it may be reassuring to know that the concept of "research waste" has been applied to medical sciences too. Though their estimates of the percentage of waste are a little higher.

bmj.com/content/363/bm…

And Sturgeon's Law puts the percentage even higher and applies it more generally: "Ninety percent of everything is crap."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%…