Bartoš, František, Maier, Maximilian, Wagenmakers, Eric Jan, Nippold, Franziska, Doucouliagos, Hristos, Ioannidis, John P.A., Otte, Willem M., Sladekova, Martina, Deresssa, Teshome K., Bruns, Stephan B., Fanelli, Daniele ORCID: 0000-0003-1780-1958 and Stanley, T. D. (2024) Footprint of publication selection bias on meta-analyses in medicine, environmental sciences, psychology, and economics. Research Synthesis Methods, 15 (3). 500 - 511. ISSN 1759-2887
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Abstract
Publication selection bias undermines the systematic accumulation of evidence. To assess the extent of this problem, we survey over 68,000 meta-analyses containing over 700,000 effect size estimates from medicine (67,386/597,699), environmental sciences (199/12,707), psychology (605/23,563), and economics (327/91,421). Our results indicate that meta-analyses in economics are the most severely contaminated by publication selection bias, closely followed by meta-analyses in environmental sciences and psychology, whereas meta-analyses in medicine are contaminated the least. After adjusting for publication selection bias, the median probability of the presence of an effect decreased from 99.9% to 29.7% in economics, from 98.9% to 55.7% in psychology, from 99.8% to 70.7% in environmental sciences, and from 38.0% to 29.7% in medicine. The median absolute effect sizes (in terms of standardized mean differences) decreased from d = 0.20 to d = 0.07 in economics, from d = 0.37 to d = 0.26 in psychology, from d = 0.62 to d = 0.43 in environmental sciences, and from d = 0.24 to d = 0.13 in medicine.
Item Type: | Article |
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Official URL: | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/17592887 |
Additional Information: | © 2024 The Authors |
Divisions: | Methodology |
Subjects: | Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z665 Library Science. Information Science |
Date Deposited: | 26 Feb 2024 10:45 |
Last Modified: | 06 Dec 2024 05:36 |
URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/122107 |
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