ArticleTrends in ecology & evolution2016
Transparency in Ecology and Evolution: Real Problems, Real Solutions.
Article in Trends in ecology & evolution, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 58 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled 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.
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.
Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Quantifying research waste in ecology.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Pooled it
- Meta-analysis challenges a textbook example of status signalling and demonstrates publication bias.eLife · 2018Pooled it
- Pooled it
- A systematic review of elephant impact across Africa.PloS one · 2017Pooled it
- Overcoming the curse of knowledge: guidelines for reporting system-specific details of host infection and migration dynamics.Movement ecology · 2026Article
- On the replicability of physiological responses.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- Let's DAG in: how directed acyclic graphs can help behavioural ecology be more transparent.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Testing the reproducibility of ecological studies on insect behavior in a multi-laboratory setting identifies opportunities for improving experimental rigor.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- EthoCRED: a framework to guide reporting and evaluation of the relevance and reliability of behavioural ecotoxicity studies.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Conceptual and ethical considerations in invasion science.Bioscience · 2025Article
- Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Poor hypotheses and research waste in biology: learning from a theory crisis in psychology.BMC biology · 2025Review
- A large-scale in silico replication of ecological and evolutionary studies.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Code sharing in ecology and evolution increases citation rates but remains uncommon.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Computationally reproducing results from meta-analyses in ecology and evolutionary biology using shared code and data.PloS one · 2024Article
- Exaggerated effects in ecology.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Empirical evidence of widespread exaggeration bias and selective reporting in ecology.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- FLAVIA-LCT - Framework for systematic literature review to analyse vast InformAtion in life cycle thinking studies.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Reproducibility in ecology and evolution: Minimum standards for data and code.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Publication bias impacts on effect size, statistical power, and magnitude (Type M) and sign (Type S) errors in ecology and evolutionary biology.BMC biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
To make progress scientists need to know what other researchers have found and how they found it. However, transparency is often insufficient across much of ecology and evolution. Researchers often fail to report results and methods in detail sufficient to permit interpretation and meta-analysis, and many results go entirely unreported. Further, these unreported results are often a biased subset. Thus the conclusions we can draw from the published literature are themselves often biased and sometimes might be entirely incorrect. Fortunately there is a movement across empirical disciplines, and now within ecology and evolution, to shape editorial policies to better promote transparency. This can be done by either requiring more disclosure by scientists or by developing incentives to encourage disclosure.
Indexed as
Identifiers
27461041What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.