Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article: Lehrer, Jonah (December 13, 2010), The Truth Wears Off, Is There Something Wrong With the Scientific Method?, New Yorker, New York, NY, Retrieved on 2011-01-02Source Material [www.newyorker.com]
Memes
01 JAN 2011
Publication Bias Produces a "Decline Effect"
Jennions, similarly, argues that the decline effect is largely a product of publication bias, or the tendency of scientists and scientific journals to prefer positive data over null results, which is what happens when no effect is found. The bias was first identified by the statistician Theodore Sterling, in 1959, after he noticed that ninety-seven per cent of all published psychological studies with statistically significant data found the effect they were looking for. A “significant” result...Folksonomies: research decline effect
Folksonomies: research decline effect
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Because publications are biased towards positive results, when a phenomenon produced in earlier studies turns out not to be true, then later studies will increasingly have difficulty reproducing the results.
02 JAN 2011
A Classic Example of Selective Reporting
One of the classic examples of selective reporting concerns the testing of acupuncture in different countries. While acupuncture is widely accepted as a medical treatment in various Asian countries, its use is much more contested in the West. These cultural differences have profoundly influenced the results of clinical trials. Between 1966 and 1995, there were forty-seven studies of acupuncture in China, Taiwan, and Japan, and every single trial concluded that acupuncture was an effective tre...Studies of acupuncture in the West and East come up with very different assessments of it effectiveness.
