Is publication bias intentional?

Bias may be introduced intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously, into the process of research dissemination. 3,18 The dissemination profile of research may be influenced by investigators, study sponsors, peer reviewers, and journal editors.

What type of bias is publication bias?

Publication bias is a type of reporting bias and closely related to dissemination bias, although dissemination bias generally applies to all forms of results dissemination, not simply journal publications.

What is wrong with publication bias?

In the presence of publication bias, belief in the relationship increases artificially and iteratively with each positive publication. This, in turn, diminishes the credibility of hypothesis testing because it is based on biased information, and calls into question the integrity of the entire experimental framework.

How is publication bias an ethical issue?

Apparently, publication bias poses serious threats to the integrity of scientific research. It prevents us from consuming objective, true, and unbiased research, and introduces much error in what we read and believe. Thus, publication bias and relevant topics should be addressed in research ethics modules and courses.

What is the publication bias fallacy?

Publication bias is sometimes called the file-drawer effect, or file-drawer problem. This term suggests that results not supporting the hypotheses of researchers often go no further than the researchers' file drawers, leading to a bias in published research.

Understanding Publication Bias in Research

What is a real life example of publication bias?

Publication Bias: is when certain types of studies are published over others. A real-life example of publication bias is a study was published about an antidepressant that was not approved for use in the U.S., but has been approved in other countries.

What are examples of publication bias?

For example, one may communicate a story with undue significance or weight; that is, with greater importance than a neutral journalist or editor would provide. Outcome reporting bias is a type of bias that happens when the researcher chooses to publish specific outcomes based on the results.

How can publication bias be prevented?

Bias can be minimized by (1) insisting on high-quality research and thorough literature reviews, (2) eliminating the double standard concerning peer review and informed consent applied to clinical research and practice, (3) publishing legitimate trials regardless of their results, (4) requiring peer reviewers to ...

How do you know if there is publication bias?

A subgroup analysis of moderators that includes published studies and unpublished studies are estimated and, if the effect-size estimate of published studies is greater than that of unpublished studies, then one can reasonably conclude publication bias is evident (Borenstein et al., 2011).

Is reporting bias the same as publication bias?

Reporting bias (publication bias or outcome reporting bias) occurs when the decision to report depends on the direction or magnitude of the findings. In clinical research, registration of trials prior to data collection is used to prevent selective reporting ( Chan et al., 2017; Gopal et al., 2018).

Does publication bias cause heterogeneity?

Our results show that the effect of publication bias on the Q test and assessment of heterogeneity is large, complex, and nonlinear. Publication bias can both dramatically decrease and increase heterogeneity in true effect size, particularly if the number of studies is large and population effect size is small.

Why is there a publication bias against no effects?

Publication bias can also arise from decisions of journal editors and peer reviewers to reject studies with null results because: “negative results have never made riveting reading”; the study may be similar to the peer-reviewer's own work; they may be biased against research in different fields; or because studies ...

How do you deal with publication bias in meta-analysis?

What are the methods for publication bias?

Of the methods available to researchers for the detection of publication bias, one of the simplest is the funnel plot. This is a scatterplot of the estimate of effect from each study in the meta-analysis against a measure of its precision, usually 1/SE (Figure 1A).

What is the best test for publication bias?

Egger's test is commonly used to assess potential publication bias in a meta-analysis via funnel plot asymmetry (Egger's test is a linear regression of the intervention effect estimates on their standard errors weighted by their inverse variance).

What are the two methods of publication bias testing?

What is the most common example of bias?

Biases are beliefs that are not founded by known facts about someone or about a particular group of individuals. For example, one common bias is that women are weak (despite many being very strong). Another is that blacks are dishonest (when most aren't).

What is an example of publication bias in medicine?

A meta-analysis of published and unpublished data on reboxetine for the acute treatment of major depression found it, overall, to be an ineffective and potentially harmful antidepressant. The published evidence overestimated the benefits of reboxetine while underestimating the harms.

What is publication bias in psych?

Publication bias, in its most general definition, is the phenomenon that significant results have a better chance of being published, are published earlier, and are published in journals with higher impact factors [34].

What is the limitation of publication bias?

The potential for publication bias may be limited by attempting to identify and include trials that are not published in peer-refereed journals, such as those presented at industry-sponsored or academic forums.

How does publication bias impact scientific results?

“The net effect of publication bias is that negative results are less likely to be seen, read and processed by scientific peers,” said Bergstrom.

Why bias should be avoided in research?

Bias can damage research, if the researcher chooses to allow his bias to distort the measurements and observations or their interpretation. When faculty are biased about individual students in their courses, they may grade some students more or less favorably than others, which is not fair to any of the students.

Why is publication bias an issue for meta-analytic studies?

In meta-analysis, publication bias is a particularly thorny issue because meta- analysis has been put forward as providing a more accurate appraisal of a research literature than is provided by traditional narrative reviews (Egger et al., 2000), but if the sample of studies retrieved for review is biased, then the ...

Does publication bias affect meta-analysis?

Publication bias is a serious problem in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which can affect the validity and generalization of conclusions. Currently, approaches to dealing with publication bias can be distinguished into two classes: selection models and funnel-plot-based methods.

Do meta-analysis have publication bias?

However, the chance of a study being published by a scientific journal is frequently associated with the statistical significance of its results: more significant findings are more likely to be published, causing publication bias in meta-analysis of published studies (Begg and Berlin, 1988; Stern and Simes, 1997; ...