How much is a high percentage?
From the article:
One study, for instance, analyzed 432 different claims of genetic links for various health risks that vary between men and women. Only one of these claims proved to be consistently replicable. Another meta review, meanwhile, looked at the 49 most-cited clinical research studies published between 1990 and 2003. Most of these were the culmination of years of careful work. Nevertheless, more than 40 percent of them were later shown to be either totally wrong or significantly incorrect.
Those didn't analyze all of medicine, of course, but it does sound pretty bad for the overall percentage.
Jonah Lehrer has up another of his contrarian science articles: "Trials and Errors: Why Science Is Failing Us".
Main topics: the failure of drugs in clinical trials, diminishing returns to pharmaceutical research, doctors over-treating, and Humean causality-correlation distinction, with some Ioannidis mixed through-out.
See also "Why epidemiology will not correct itself"
In completely unrelated news, Nick Bostrom is stepping down from IEET's Chairman of the Board.