5 tips for dealing with non-significant results
What can researchers do to avoid unpublishable results?
Originally published at Nature Index, 16 September 2019
When researchers fail to find a statistically significant result, it’s often treated as exactly that — a failure. Non-significant results are difficult to publish in scientific journals and, as a result, researchers often choose not to submit them for publication.
This means that the evidence published in scientific journals is biased towards studies that find effects.
A study published in Science by a team from Stanford University who investigated 221 survey-based experiments funded by the National Science Foundation found that nearly two-thirds of the social science experiments that produced null results were filed away, never to be published.
By comparison, 96% of the studies with statistically strong results were written up.
“These biases imperil the robustness of scientific evidence,” says David Mehler, a psychologist at the University of Münster in Germany. “But they also harm early career researchers in particular who depend on building up a track record.”
Mehler is the co-author of a recent article published in the Journal of European Psychology Students about appreciating the significance of non-significant findings.
So, what can researchers do to avoid unpublishable results?
Continue reading at Nature Index
