ArticleeLife2020
Questionable research practices may have little effect on replicability.
Article in eLife, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Why researchers cut corners: motivations, pressures, and personality in questionable research practices.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Questionable Research Practices: A Principled Classification and Ranking Based on Survey Data.Science and engineering ethics · 2026Article
- What is critical metascience and why is it important?Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Housing and husbandry factors affecting zebrafish novel tank test responses: a global multi-laboratory study.Lab animal · 2025Article
- Editorial Perspective: Misaligned incentives in mental health research - the case for Registered Reports.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2024Article
- Is N-Hacking Ever OK? The consequences of collecting more data in pursuit of statistical significance.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- The replication crisis has led to positive structural, procedural, and community changes.Communications psychology · 2023Review
- Editorial: Persistence of measurement problems in psychological research.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Article
- Compounds co-targeting kinases in axon regulatory pathways promote regeneration and behavioral recovery after spinal cord injury in mice.Experimental neurology · 2022Article
- Overcoming the phenomenological Perpetuum mobile in clinical cognitive neuroscience for the benefit of replicability in research and the societal view on mental disorders.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This article examines why many studies fail to replicate statistically significant published results. We address this issue within a general statistical framework that also allows us to include various questionable research practices (QRPs) that are thought to reduce replicability. The analyses indicate that the base rate of true effects is the major factor that determines the replication rate of scientific results. Specifically, for purely statistical reasons, replicability is low in research domains where true effects are rare (e.g., search for effective drugs in pharmacology). This point is under-appreciated in current scientific and media discussions of replicability, which often attribute poor replicability mainly to QRPs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What 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.