Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.
Interpretation
Positive results are preferentially published over negative ones, undermining trust in medical evidence.
This quote by Ben Goldacre highlights a significant bias in the publication practices of medical research, where studies that yield positive findings are more likely to be published than those with negative findings. This imbalance can lead to a distorted understanding of medical evidence, inhibiting genuine progress and improvement in healthcare, as important negative outcomes may be overlooked.
In practice
In a research talk, one could quote Goldacre to emphasize the importance of transparency in scientific publishing.
Teaching needs an ecosystem that supports evidence-based practice. It will need better systems to disseminate the results of research more widely, but also a better understanding of research, so that teachers can be critical consumers of evidence.
Yes. I'm a doctor, an epidemiologist, and lots of my professional colleagues flip back and forth between industry and medical roles. I know them; they are not bad people. But it is possible for good people in bad systems to do things that inflict enormous harm.
If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist.
I told him that for a modern scientist, practicing experimental research, the least that could be said, is that we do not know. But I felt that such a negative answer was only part of the truth. I told him that in this universe in which we live, unbounded in space, infinite in stored energy and, who knows, unlimited in time, the adequate and positive answer, according to my belief, is that this universe may, also, possess infinite potentialities.
The Earth is not 6,000 or 10,000 years old. It's not. And if that conflicts with your beliefs, I strongly feel you should question your beliefs.
Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities.
It is remarkable, Hardin, how the religion of science has grabbed hold.
I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.
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