Based on data from Altmetric.com. Altmetric is supported by Macmillan Science and Education, which owns Nature Publishing Group.

Nearly a decade after writing a scathing critique of biomedical research, 'Why Most Published Research Findings Are False', Stanford University scientist John Ioannidis has published a follow-up (J. P. A. Ioannidis PLoS Med. 11, e1001747; 2014). The health-policy researcher suggests a blueprint for making scientific results more reliable, including increasing the statistical certainty of discoveries, giving more weight to negative results and changing how researchers earn kudos.

Many commenters chimed in with support for his paper, even if they did not believe that change could come easily. Simon Wheeler, a public-health nutritionist at the University of Cambridge, UK, endorsed Ioannidis's suggestions, tweeting that scientists should be “creating a culture where these are norms and expectations, not just lofty ideals”. Mick Watson, a computational biologist at the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, UK, tweeted, “I'm totally with John Ioannidis when he says the scientific reward system needs to change.” See go.nature.com/kw7hck for more.

figure 1