Ioannidis's 2005 paper "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"
[5] has been the most downloaded technical paper from the journal
PLoS Medicine.
[8] A profile of his work in this area appears in the November 2010 issue of
The Atlantic.
[9]The Atlantic article notes
Ioannidis analyzed "49 of the most highly regarded research findings in medicine over the previous 13 years". In the paper Ioannidis compared the 45 studies that claimed to have uncovered effective interventions with data from subsequent studies with larger sample sizes: 7 (16%) of the studies were contradicted, 7 (16%) the effects were smaller than in the initial study and 31 (68%) of the studies remained either unchallenged or the findings could not be replicated.[5]