5 ms·
This issue also concerns studies with non-results in all scientific fields. The pressure to produce "results" causes two types of problems: 1. Massive fudging
by bk 18y ago
This issue also concerns studies with non-results in all scientific fields. The pressure to produce "results" causes two types of problems:
1. Massive fudging of data to achieve (statistical) significance.
2. Inefficiencies due to researchers repeating failing experiments because they can't learn from the unpublished non-results of others.
It's fundamentally a problem of human psychology (reputation/face saving), and of organizational design, which sets up the rewards context (universities, tenure process, journals, etc.) The system is pretty outdated and broken for the modern pace of information production, imho.
- ricree 18y agoTo be fair, though, people are aware of this issue and working against it. For example, there's the Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine (http://www.jnrbm.com/ http://www.jnrbm.com/), which provides an avenue to publish these sorts of negative results. That said, I agree that this is definitely a major issue for research in most fields.
- mattmcknight 18y agoAnother insidious angle is multiple publications based on the same data, which create the appearance that there is more evidence than there really is.