In the last decade it has become increasingly evident that a considerable fraction of the recent scientific literature, perhaps half, has major flaws. This has become known as the “The Replication Crisis”. It is an issue that was first realised in the biomedical science, but has spread to psychology, education and many other areas of science. It is a big issue that is being reported upon in journals such as Nature.
In this paper, Larcombe and Ridd 2018, my old colleague Piers Larcombe and I ask the question of whether it is likely that there the environmental sciences have similar quality problems, and give many examples of GBR science that appears to be questionable at best.
It is concluded that any “scientific” work that is to be used to base large public policy decisions needs to be subjected to far more rigorous QA/QC mechanisms than simple peer review.
Great Barrier Reef Science Commentary 