PUBLICATION BIAS AGAINST NULL RESULTS

Publication policy or publication bias?

Although ‘‘a large number of studies have appeared in the literature that report associations of low penetrance genetic variants with disease,’’ as suggested in the recent CEBP editorial (1), hardly any of these reports have been translated into solid results by replication studies, at least for the common cancers. To some extent this is inevitable, as false-positive associations are an inheren...

Publication Bias

Publication bias is a scientific problem with adverse ethical outcomes: the case for a section for null results.

The communication of research findings is one of our most important functions. Not communicating research findings can be harmful in many ways. Publication bias is a well-known phenomenon that affects cancer epidemiology, biomarker research, and cancer prevention. As these areas grow, along with the technologies, the risk of publication bias grows. To avoid the pitfall of publication bias and e...

Bias against the null hypothesis: the reproductive hazards of cocaine.

To examine whether studies showing no adverse effects of cocaine in pregnancy have a different likelihood of being accepted for presentation by a large scientific meeting, all abstracts submitted to the Society of Pediatric Research between 1980 and 1989 were analysed. There were 58 abstracts on fetal outcome after gestational exposure to cocaine. Of the 9 negative abstracts (showing no adverse...

Systematic review of publication bias in studies on publication bias.