IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pbio00/3000127.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evidence that nonsignificant results are sometimes preferred: Reverse P-hacking or selective reporting?

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre J C Chuard
  • Milan Vrtílek
  • Megan L Head
  • Michael D Jennions

Abstract

There is increased concern about poor scientific practices arising from an excessive focus on P-values. Two particularly worrisome practices are selective reporting of significant results and ‘P-hacking’. The latter is the manipulation of data collection, usage, or analyses to obtain statistically significant outcomes. Here, we introduce the novel, to our knowledge, concepts of selective reporting of nonsignificant results and ‘reverse P-hacking’ whereby researchers ensure that tests produce a nonsignificant result. We test whether these practices occur in experiments in which researchers randomly assign subjects to treatment and control groups to minimise differences in confounding variables that might affect the focal outcome. By chance alone, 5% of tests for a group difference in confounding variables should yield a significant result (P

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre J C Chuard & Milan Vrtílek & Megan L Head & Michael D Jennions, 2019. "Evidence that nonsignificant results are sometimes preferred: Reverse P-hacking or selective reporting?," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(1), pages 1-7, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:3000127
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000127
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000127
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000127&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000127?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John P A Ioannidis, 2005. "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 2(8), pages 1-1, August.
    2. Daniele Fanelli, 2012. "Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 90(3), pages 891-904, March.
    3. Megan L Head & Luke Holman & Rob Lanfear & Andrew T Kahn & Michael D Jennions, 2015. "The Extent and Consequences of P-Hacking in Science," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-15, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matteo Picchio & Michele Ubaldi, 2024. "Unemployment and health: A meta‐analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(4), pages 1437-1472, September.
    2. Uwe Hassler & Marc‐Oliver Pohle, 2022. "Unlucky Number 13? Manipulating Evidence Subject to Snooping," International Statistical Review, International Statistical Institute, vol. 90(2), pages 397-410, August.
    3. Aleda M. Roth & Vinod R. Singhal, 2022. "Pioneering role of the Production and Operations Management in promoting empirical research in operations management," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(12), pages 4529-4543, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Piotr Bialowolski & Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska & Eileen McNeely, 2021. "The Role of Financial Fragility and Financial Control for Well-Being," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 1137-1157, June.
    2. Karin Langenkamp & Bodo Rödel & Kerstin Taufenbach & Meike Weiland, 2018. "Open Access in Vocational Education and Training Research," Publications, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-12, July.
    3. Brian Fabo & Martina Jancokova & Elisabeth Kempf & Lubos Pastor, 2020. "Fifty Shades of QE: Conflicts of Interest in Economic Research," Working and Discussion Papers WP 5/2020, Research Department, National Bank of Slovakia.
    4. Stephan B Bruns & John P A Ioannidis, 2016. "p-Curve and p-Hacking in Observational Research," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(2), pages 1-13, February.
    5. Christian Heise & Joshua M. Pearce, 2020. "From Open Access to Open Science: The Path From Scientific Reality to Open Scientific Communication," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, May.
    6. Oliver Braganza, 2020. "A simple model suggesting economically rational sample-size choice drives irreproducibility," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-19, March.
    7. Martin E Héroux & Janet L Taylor & Simon C Gandevia, 2015. "The Use and Abuse of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to Modulate Corticospinal Excitability in Humans," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-10, December.
    8. van Aert, Robbie Cornelis Maria & van Assen, Marcel A. L. M., 2018. "P-uniform," MetaArXiv zqjr9, Center for Open Science.
    9. Megan L Head & Luke Holman & Rob Lanfear & Andrew T Kahn & Michael D Jennions, 2015. "The Extent and Consequences of P-Hacking in Science," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-15, March.
    10. Mark D Lindner & Richard K Nakamura, 2015. "Examining the Predictive Validity of NIH Peer Review Scores," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-12, June.
    11. Lars Ole Schwen & Sabrina Rueschenbaum, 2018. "Ten quick tips for getting the most scientific value out of numerical data," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-21, October.
    12. Adriano Koshiyama & Nick Firoozye, 2019. "Avoiding Backtesting Overfitting by Covariance-Penalties: an empirical investigation of the ordinary and total least squares cases," Papers 1905.05023, arXiv.org.
    13. Robbie C M van Aert & Jelte M Wicherts & Marcel A L M van Assen, 2019. "Publication bias examined in meta-analyses from psychology and medicine: A meta-meta-analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-32, April.
    14. Augusteijn, Hilde & van Aert, Robbie Cornelis Maria & van Assen, Marcel A. L. M., 2017. "The Effect of Publication Bias on the Assessment of Heterogeneity," OSF Preprints gv25c, Center for Open Science.
    15. Bialek, Michal & Misiak, Michał & Dziekan, Martyna, 2021. "Why is the statistical revolution not progressing? Vicious cycle of the scientific reform," OSF Preprints gmfs9, Center for Open Science.
    16. van Aert, Robbie Cornelis Maria, 2018. "Dissertation R.C.M. van Aert," MetaArXiv eqhjd, Center for Open Science.
    17. Hannah Fraser & Tim Parker & Shinichi Nakagawa & Ashley Barnett & Fiona Fidler, 2018. "Questionable research practices in ecology and evolution," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-16, July.
    18. Jeremy Arkes, 2020. "Teaching Graduate (and Undergraduate) Econometrics: Some Sensible Shifts to Improve Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Usefulness," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-23, September.
    19. Tracey L Weissgerber & Vesna D Garovic & Jelena S Milin-Lazovic & Stacey J Winham & Zoran Obradovic & Jerome P Trzeciakowski & Natasa M Milic, 2016. "Reinventing Biostatistics Education for Basic Scientists," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-12, April.
    20. Daniele Fanelli & Wolfgang Glänzel, 2013. "Bibliometric Evidence for a Hierarchy of the Sciences," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(6), pages 1-11, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:3000127. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosbiology (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.