The recent popularity of systems approaches in molecular biology is perhaps best understood as a reaction to technological developments beginning in the 1990s, notably the large sequencing projects such as the Human Genome Project.

Over the last decades the life sciences have gained increasing prominence in the public sphere, as the exponential success of our molecular gaze on life has been opening not only new vistas of knowledge but also unprecedented options to intervene into living processes.

As a post-doc, I used to assume that published work, particularly in high-ranking journals, was something you could rely on. Now the feeling is changed. A commentary recently appeared in Science (1) voiced a question that I have been asking myself since sometimes: how much of the published scientific work can nowadays really be trusted?