Evidence map›Paper›PMID 20422014›Full record

ArticlePloS one2010

Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.

Daniele Fanelli

Abstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in PloS one, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 168 papers, 12 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
168citing papers in PubMed, 12 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

168 citing papers in PubMed, 12 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

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  5. Meta-assessment of bias in science.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017
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  15. Multiple Authors in a Scientific Article: Friends and Foes.Interdisciplinary cardiovascular and thoracic surgery · 2026
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108 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Daniele FanelliINNOGEN and Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. dfanelli@staffmail.ed.ac.uk

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The growing competition and "publish or perish" culture in academia might conflict with the objectivity and integrity of research, because it forces scientists to produce "publishable" results at all costs. Papers are less likely to be published and to be cited if they report "negative" results (results that fail to support the tested hypothesis). Therefore, if publication pressures increase scientific bias, the frequency of "positive" results in the literature should be higher in the more competitive and "productive" academic environments. This study verified this hypothesis by measuring the frequency of positive results in a large random sample of papers with a corresponding author based in the US. Across all disciplines, papers were more likely to support a tested hypothesis if their corresponding authors were working in states that, according to NSF data, produced more academic papers per capita. The size of this effect increased when controlling for state's per capita R&D expenditure and for study characteristics that previous research showed to correlate with the frequency of positive results, including discipline and methodology. Although the confounding effect of institutions' prestige could not be excluded (researchers in the more productive universities could be the most clever and successful in their experiments), these results support the hypothesis that competitive academic environments increase not only scientists' productivity but also their bias. The same phenomenon might be observed in other countries where academic competition and pressures to publish are high.

Indexed as

BiasConflict of InterestEthics, ProfessionalPublication BiasPublishingUnited States

Identifiers

PMID20422014
PMCPMC2858206

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.