Background: We explore whether the number of null results in large National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded trials has increased over time. Methods: We identified all large NHLBI supported RCTs between 1970 and 2012 evaluating drugs or …
Genetics and neuroscience are two areas of science that pose particular methodological problems because they involve detecting weak signals (i.e., small effects) in noisy data. In recent years, increasing numbers of studies have attempted to bridge …
The vast majority of health-related observational studies are not prospectively registered and the advantages of registration have not been fully appreciated. Nonetheless, international standards require approval of study protocols by an independent …
Many philosophers of science and methodologists have argued that the ability to repeat studies and obtain similar results is an essential component of science. A finding is elevated from single observation to scientific evidence when the procedures …
The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual …
Cases of clear scientific misconduct have received significant media attention recently, but less flagrantly questionable research practices may be more prevalent and, ultimately, more damaging to the academic enterprise. Using an anonymous …
According to a recent meta-analysis, religious priming has a positive effect on prosocial behavior (Shariff et al., 2015). We first argue that this meta-analysis suffers from a number of methodological shortcomings that limit the conclusions that can …
Publication selection bias is a serious challenge to the integrity of all empirical sciences. We derive meta-regression approximations to reduce this bias. Our approach employs Taylor polynomial approximations tothe conditional mean of a truncated …
The results of many published studies across many scientific domains are not easily reproduced by independent laboratories. For example, an initiative by Bayer Healthcare to replicate 67 pre-clinical studies led to a reproducibility rate of 20-25% …