Why Publishing Everything Is More Effective than Selective Publishing of Statistically Significant Results

Marcel A L M van Assen, Robbie C M van Aert, Michèle B Nuijten and Jelte M Wicherts

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-5

Abstract: Background: De Winter and Happee [1] examined whether science based on selective publishing of significant results may be effective in accurate estimation of population effects, and whether this is even more effective than a science in which all results are published (i.e., a science without publication bias). Based on their simulation study they concluded that “selective publishing yields a more accurate meta-analytic estimation of the true effect than publishing everything, (and that) publishing nonreplicable results while placing null results in the file drawer can be beneficial for the scientific collective” (p.4). Methods and Findings: Using their scenario with a small to medium population effect size, we show that publishing everything is more effective for the scientific collective than selective publishing of significant results. Additionally, we examined a scenario with a null effect, which provides a more dramatic illustration of the superiority of publishing everything over selective publishing. Conclusion: Publishing everything is more effective than only reporting significant outcomes.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0084896 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 84896&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0084896

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084896

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().