---
title: "Decline effect"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_effect"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:36:35.033819+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Criticism ==
One concern that some  have expressed is that Lehrer's article may further fuel people's skepticism about academic science. It was long believed that Lehrer's article originally hinted that academic science is not as rigid as people would like to believe. It is especially the article's ending that has upset many scientists and led to broad criticism of the article. Lehrer ends the article by saying: "Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe." This has upset scientists in the scientific community. Many have written back to Lehrer and questioned his agenda. Some have characterized Lehrer's assertion as "absurd", while others claiming that Lehrer is trying to use publication bias as an excuse for not believing in anything.
As an answer to the many comments Lehrer received upon publishing the article, Lehrer published a comment on his blog, The Frontal Cortex, where he denied that he was implicitly questioning science and scientific methods in any way. In the same blog comment, Lehrer stated that he was not questioning fundamental scientific theories such as the theory of evolution by natural selection and global warming by calling them "two of the most robust and widely tested theories of modern science".
A further clarification was published as a follow-up note in The New Yorker. In this note, entitled "More Thoughts on the Decline Effect", Lehrer tries mainly to answer the critics by giving examples where scientific research has both failed and succeeded. As an example, Lehrer uses Richard Feynman's commencement speech at Caltech in 1974 as a starting point. In his commencement speech, Feynman used Robert Millikan's and Harvey Fletcher's oil drop experiment to measure the charge of an electron to illustrate how selective reporting can bias scientific results. On the other hand, Feynman finds solace in the fact that other scientists will repeat other scientists' experiments and hence, the truth will win out in the end.
Lehrer once again uses the follow-up note to deny that his original intention was to support people denying well verified scientific theories such as natural selection and climate change. Instead, he wishes that "we'd spend more time considering the value of second-generation antipsychotics or the verity of the latest gene-association study". In the other parts of the follow-up note, Lehrer briefly discusses some of the creative feedback he has received in order to reduce publication bias. He does not give explicit support to any specific idea. The follow-up article ends with Lehrer once again stating that the decline effect is a problem in today's science, but that science will eventually find a tool to deal with the problem.

== See also ==
Cargo cult science
Hundredth monkey effect
Replication crisis

== References ==