Reporting errors and biases in published empirical findings: Evidence from innovation research

Stephan B. Bruns, Igor Asanov, Rasmus Bode, Melanie Dunger, Christoph Funk, Sherif Hassan, Julia Hauschildt, Dominik Heinisch, Karol Kempa, Johannes König, Johannes Lips, Matthias Verbeck, Eva Wolfschütz and Guido Buenstorf

Research Policy, 2019, vol. 48, issue 9, -

Abstract: Errors and biases in published results compromise the reliability of empirical research, posing threats to the cumulative research process and to evidence-based decision making. We provide evidence on reporting errors and biases in innovation research. We find that 45% of the articles in our sample contain at least one result for which the provided statistical information is not consistent with reported significance levels. In 25% of the articles, at least one strong reporting error is diagnosed where a statistically non-significant finding becomes significant or vice versa using the common significance threshold of 0.1. The error rate at the test level is very small with 4.0% exhibiting any error and 1.4% showing strong errors. We also find systematically more marginally significant findings compared to marginally non-significant findings at the 0.05 and 0.1 thresholds of statistical significance. These discontinuities indicate the presence of reporting biases. Explorative analysis suggests that discontinuities are related to authors’ affiliations and to a lesser extent the article’s rank in the issue and the style of reporting.

Keywords: Reporting bias; Reporting error; Innovation; p-hacking; Publication bias; Caliper test (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C10 C12 C18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733319301076
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:respol:v:48:y:2019:i:9:25

DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2019.05.005

Access Statistics for this article

Research Policy is currently edited by M. Bell, B. Martin, W.E. Steinmueller, A. Arora, M. Callon, M. Kenney, S. Kuhlmann, Keun Lee and F. Murray

More articles in Research Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().