> Meta-analysis is interesting, but it's ultimately a shoddy attempt to patch over the much larger problem of widespread methodological failure. I think I know

> Meta-analysis is interesting, but it's ultimately a shoddy attempt to patch over the much larger problem of widespread methodological failure. I think I know what you are getting at. Let me try to unpack what I mean, and I would like to see if you would agree... I agree that "widespread methodological failure" is a problem with science in the real world. However, by your writing, it would seem that you attack meta-analysis as a technique. 1. Meta-analysis (MA) is a solid technique and not shoddy. I'm not saying it works equally well in all situations, but I am saying that it works better than not using it. :) 2. MA cannot "correct" one underlying study that is flawed. (This is obvious; doing statistics with a sample size of one is silly.) 3. Nor can MA correct for a systemic problem in underlying studies. 4. However, in the same way that statistics can be resilient over random errors in measurement, MA can handle studies of varying quality, provided that they do not have significant errors pointing in the same directions. (This is the often claimed, but less-often tested, assumption that errors are randomly distributed.)