Publication bias and the chase for statistical significance.

Most published research findings are false according to Ioannidis. As social animals, we are attracted, sometimes irresistibly, towards accepting sensational positive results and inclined to dismiss the negative ones ---which may be just as important. We have also come to believe that the reliability of a result in medical research, including optometry and ophthalmology, should be expressed solely in terms of p-values. As a consequence, studies with statistically significant results are not only more likely to be published, they are more likely to be cited and promoted, a trend that seems to be alive and well in current eye research. Since getting a significant result serves researchers and journals better than a negative one, there is a bias (unconscious or otherwise) towards cherry-picking findings. To this end, statistics can be misused to manipulate data and analyses until significant effects are extracted. This form of scientific misconduct is surprisingly common and is known as p-hacking or data dredging or p-value fishing. It was poetically described as the fourth circle of Scientific Hell: