I’m not sure whether I found this report from the Guardian amusing, distressing, or a combination of the two:
Scientific research findings that are probably wrong gain far more attention than robust results, according to academics who suspect that the bar for publication may be lower for papers with grabbier conclusions.
Studies in top science, psychology and economics journals that fail to hold up when others repeat them are cited, on average, more than 100 times as often in follow-up papers than work that stands the test of time.
The finding – which is itself not exempt from the need for scrutiny – has led the authors to suspect that more interesting papers are waved through more easily by reviewers and journal editors and, once published, attract more attention.
That wouldn’t have been my suspicion. As should not particularly surprise you the worst offender was economics but as may surprise you the phenomenon cannot be explained by negative citations. I didn’t think much of the statistical analysis involved in this study. IMO the results could potentially be explained by a very high number of citations of a relatively small number of publications. What could possibly explain that?
Flashy results always get a lot of publicity. Retractions and corrections get a lot less. Still, a lot of this comes from the way research is funded. The funding to do studies to do repeat studies to try to confirm (or refute) an earlier study is harder to come by.
Steve