Part of the phenomenon can be explained by the natural censorship
in what is accepted for publication: Stronger results tend to have less
difficulty getting published. Therefore, given that a result is
published, it is evident that the estimated magnitude of the effect is
in average larger than it is in reality, just by the fact that weaker
results are less likely to be published. A study of the literature on
this subject might yield an interesting and valuable estimate of the
magnitude of this selection bias.
A more insidious problem, that may not affect the work of Jonah
Lehrer, is political corruption in the way research is funded, with less
public and more private funding of research
(http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=21052&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html).
For example, I've heard claims (which I cannot substantiate right now)
that cell phone companies allegedly lobbied successfully to block
funding for researchers they thought were likely to document health
problems with their products. Related claims have been made by
scientists in the US Food and Drug Administration that certain therapies
were approved on political grounds in spite of substantive questions
about the validity of the research backing the request for approval
(e.g., www.naturalnews.com/025298_the_FDA_scientists.html). Some of
these accusations of political corruption may be groundless. However,
as private funding replaces tax money for basic science, we must expect
an increase in research results that match the needs of the funding
agency while degrading the quality of published research. This produces
more research that can not be replicated -- effects that get smaller
upon replication. (My wife and I routinely avoid certain therapies
recommended by physicians, because the physicians get much of their
information on recent drugs from the pharmaceuticals, who have a vested
interest in presenting their products in the most positive light.)
Spencer
On 1/6/2011 2:39 PM, Carl Witthoft wrote:
The next week's New Yorker has some decent rebuttal letters. The case
is hardly as clear-cut as the author would like to believe.
Carl
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