"Science is Broken," Says Scientists

Scientists Conclude Science May Be Fatally Flawed, Pending Further Study (Photo: Getty-ish)

By Z
Zeighmn Blog
Updated Nov. 13, 2025, 2:11 p.m. MST

In a stunning realization by prominent experts across nearly every field—from chemistry to medicine, environmental studies to genetics, physics to economics—the world’s leading scientists are now joining forces to prove, or possibly disprove, a single startling theory:

That science itself is broken.

According to several alarming studies—including a 2015 Science meta-analysis that found fewer than 40 percent of landmark psychology experiments could be replicated—research has become harder to verify, impossible to reproduce, and increasingly at odds with past findings.

Or so the data suggest.

Then again, if the scientific method itself is in question, how can we trust the data suggesting that science is in crisis? If science is collapsing, who’s to say that isn’t just another hypothesis awaiting peer review?

I spoke with leading experts in the burgeoning field of science science so you don’t have to.

"Speak, Experts! I Said Speak!"

Modern science—once thought to mark humanity’s ascent from ignorance—has been undergoing a dramatic re-evaluation that could send the entire scientific community into an existential spiral, admits Dr. Margaret P. Margarine, Ph.D., dean of the College of Navel Gazing at Adderall College in Bankrupt, California.

“Humanity has been living in a relatively prosperous time, scientifically speaking,” says Margarine. “But what started as a method for understanding reality has become an end goal in itself. We’re studying science for science’s sake.”

Such self-referential science, she warns, isn’t sustainable. “We’re no longer finding answers—just generating new questions faster than we can lose funding.”

Her findings are supported, and contradicted, by Dr. Stephen K. Starvingut, Ph.D., professor of Left-Handed Research Practices at College University in Get Out, Missouri.

“Science today is both proving and disproving itself at record speed,” says Starvingut. “Depending on who funds the study, we can confirm or refute anything—often in the same issue of the same journal.”

His 2024 paper, Crises in Science: Conflicting Data in Comparative Meta-Analyses of Result-Oriented Conclusions, found that not a single study from the prior year held up under follow-up scrutiny.

A subsequent paper, Validation in Process: Proofs and Disproofs in Data Validity Displayed Amid Perceived Incongruencies, immediately disproved that finding.

“Statistically speaking,” Starvingut concedes, “it’s a dead heat between truth and error.”

The Scientific Industrial Complex

The problem, experts say, isn’t the method—it’s the ecosystem.

“We have too much science,” says Margarine. “And too many scientists. It’s basic supply and demand: the more researchers we produce, the less discovery is worth.”

Last year alone, more than 3 million scientific papers were published worldwide—an estimated 10,000 every day. Entire journals now exist solely to retract other journals’ findings, though the retractions themselves have since been retracted.

With new Ph.D. graduates flooding academia each year, scientists now compete to either replicate or refute each other’s work just to stay employed. The result is a glut of contradictory papers and, paradoxically, a famine of innovation.

“Modern funding incentivizes results,” says Starvingut. “If your study doesn’t support your sponsor’s goals, there’s always a grant available to prove the opposite.”

Industry bias plays its part. One 2022 NIH review found that industry-funded drug trials were twice as likely to report positive outcomes as independent ones. The resulting arms race in “positive” science has produced such milestones as the study linking chocolate to weight loss—a deliberate hoax that was published and later retracted—and the ongoing series of contradictory papers on whether coffee cures or causes every known disease.

Margarine offers a more tragicomic example. “One lab sets out to cure cancer and accidentally invents a hair-loss treatment. Another tries to cure baldness and accidentally cures cancer. Naturally, both patent their discoveries and bury them to maximize their eventual profits, if they ever come.”

Industry analysts estimate the duplication rate of global research at 93 percent.

Another study claims that number is closer to 7.

Yes and "Know"

As the crisis deepens, a new field has emerged: the science of science.

“Young researchers used to want to change the world,” says Dr. Abbie Hemorrhage, author of Peer Pressure and the Perils of PhDs. “Now they just want to disprove each other.”

The discipline has grown so reflexive that experts warn humanity may soon forget how prior discoveries worked in the first place.

“We’re seeing technological amnesia,” says Hemorrhage, who also serves as senior fellow of the Institute for Recursive Progress. “NASA engineers have admitted they no longer possess the full documentation for the original Saturn V rocket engines. If we can’t rebuild what we once built, we’re not advancing—we’re just rereleasing.”

Hemorrhage paused, looking concerned. “That was just an example. I think...”

Meanwhile, anonymous government sources confirm that certain classified breakthroughs—like faster-than-light travel—may already exist, though even the scientists who achieved them are unaware due to compartmentalization.

“It’s not that progress has stalled,” Hemorrhage insists. “It’s that no one has the clearance to notify anyone that we know it.”

The Human Element (Spoiler Alert: It's Always Carbon)

Despite billions of dollars spent annually on research, many wonder what the world has to show for it.

“Right back to where we were twenty years ago,” says Harry B. Movement of Destitute, Minnesota, currently on dialysis. “I took a college course in psychology back then, but it was so expensive I had to drop out. Now I’m in debt and cutting prosciutto for a living. They say processed meats cause cancer—but who knows?”

More than 70 percent of U.S. doctoral graduates now leave academia within five years—a figure Margarine calls “de-evolution in inaction.”

When asked to speculate on the future of her field, Margarine sighed audibly, and continued to do so repeatedly until I asked her politely to stop. Then, she elaborated:

“Academia is more powerful than ever, but that doesn’t mean it’s advancing. We’ve replaced curiosity with compliance. If I were twenty again, I’d do something more practical.”

She stares at her wine glass. “Maybe I’d become a crop laborer.”

If all science is theoretically possible, then none of it is.

And if discovery is just another industry, perhaps the greatest breakthrough still waiting to be made—pending further study—is how to stop studying.