Footprint of publication selection bias on meta-analyses in medicine, economics, and psychology

08/25/2022

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by   František Bartoš, et al.

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Publication selection bias undermines the systematic accumulation of evidence. To assess the extent of this problem, we survey over 26,000 meta-analyses containing more than 800,000 effect size estimates from medicine, economics, and psychology. Our results indicate that meta-analyses in economics are the most severely contaminated by publication selection bias, closely followed by meta-analyses in psychology, whereas meta-analyses in medicine are contaminated the least. The median probability of the presence of an effect in economics decreased from 99.9 selection bias. This reduction was slightly lower in psychology (98.9 55.7 27.5 underscores the importance of adopting better research practices such as preregistration and registered reports.