The Reproducibility Mirage. The Sterling Science Series, #4

Every prescription you've ever taken, every dietary guideline your doctor follows, every cancer drug that failed in trials - they all began the same way: with a scientific paper that someone trusted without checking. In 2012, scientists at the pharmaceutical company Amgen attempted to reproduce 53 landmark cancer studies - the foundational papers that drug development programs were built on. Only 6 out of 53 held up.
That is just 11%. The other 89% were mirages. The Reproducibility Mirage is the story of how that happened, why it keeps happening, and what it costs the people furthest from the laboratory: patients, taxpayers, and anyone who has ever trusted a white coat. From a 15-year Alzheimer's fraud built on a digital eraser tool, to a pandemic study that paralysed global health policy with data that didn't exist, to the statistical sleight of hand that allowed researchers to prove that listening to The Beatles makes you younger - this book traces the full anatomy of modern science's most consequential failure.
Written with the pace of a financial thriller and the rigour of investigative journalism, The Reproducibility Mirage follows the fraud detectives, the whistleblowers working without salary, and the engineers building human-body simulators the size of a USB drive who are trying to fix a system that has spent a century using the wrong hardware. If you have ever taken a drug, followed a dietary guideline, or donated to a disease research charity, this book is about your money and your trust.
It will change the way you read a headline. It will change the questions you ask your doctor. And it will leave you - against all the evidence - with something unexpected: hope, specific and hard-won, that the people who care enough to check the maths are finally winning.