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Is Most Published Research Wrong?

Veritasium · explainer · Watch on YouTube

Scientific method & science communicationData science & statistics

What it is

Veritasium explains why a large share of published research findings may be false, covering p-values, p-hacking, publication bias and low replication rates. It draws on John Ioannidis's well-known paper and describes reforms such as preregistration.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters link it whenever a shaky study or the p<0.05 threshold comes up, as a short primer on false positives in science.

  • 8 people recommended it
  • 8 different months
  • 4 strong recommendations
  • first 2017, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “reminds me of this great video by Veritasium”

    Explains skewed test data problems in research.

    r_singh, 2018-02 · Strong recommendation · in “Neural nets more accurate than humans at detecting sexual orientation in images”

  2. “For a background on why p-values are misleading, see”

    Background on why p-values mislead and origin of 0.05.

    sillysaurusx, 2020-10 · Strong recommendation · in “Actively speaking two languages protects against cognitive impairment”

  3. “Please watch this video.”

    Why to distrust small, less rigorous studies.

    scotty79, 2021-08 · Strong recommendation · in “The Coronavirus Is Here Forever”

  4. “This Veritasium video does a great job at explaining how such skewed priors can easily appear”

    Clearly explains skewed priors and the paradox.

    KK7NIL, 2025-12 · Strong recommendation · in “I don't think Lindley's paradox supports p-circling”

  5. “Videos demonstrating this with examples”

    Shows reality and data can differ significantly.

    burntrelish1273, 2017-04 · Recommendation · in “Receding glacier causes Canadian river to vanish in four days”

  6. “There's an interesting video by Veratasium "Is Most Published Research Wrong?”

    Shows p-value threshold lets many false positives be published.

    ReligiousFlames, 2017-05 · Recommendation · in “Science to Retract Study on Fish and Microplastics”

  7. “This video walks through an example calculation and what kinds of steps are being taken to improve on things.”

    Walks through example calculation and improvement steps.

    wolfram74, 2017-07 · Recommendation · in “The US government is removing scientific data from the Internet”

  8. “This video is a good primer”

    Primer on false positives in the literature.

    hannasanarion, 2018-11 · Recommendation · in “Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: p-values, p-hacking, replication crisis, statistics, publication bias

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