Why we can't trust academic journals to tell the scientific truth

Academic journals don't select the research they publish on scientific rigour alone. So why aren't academics taking to the streets about this?

Hundreds of thousands of scientists took to streets around the world in April. "We need science because science tells the truth. We are those who can fight the fake news," a friend who participated in one of the March for Science rallies told me. I really wish this were true. Sadly, much evidence suggests otherwise.

The idea that the same experiment will always produce the same result, no matter who performs it, is one of the cornerstones of science's claim to truth. However, more than 70% of the researchers (pdf), who took part in a recent study published in Nature have tried and failed to replicate another scientist's experiment. Another study found that at least 50% of life science research cannot be replicated. The same holds for 51% of economics papers (pdf).