Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.

The growing competition and "publish or perish" culture in academia might conflict with the objectivity and integrity of research, because it forces scientists to produce "publishable" results at all costs. Papers are less likely to be published and to be cited if they report &qu...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal:	Daniele Fanelli
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2010
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/ce77519cfa94437aa37d3a6e6138a9c6
Etiquetas:	Agregar Etiqueta Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!

id	oai:doaj.org-article:ce77519cfa94437aa37d3a6e6138a9c6
record_format	dspace
spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:ce77519cfa94437aa37d3a6e6138a9c62021-11-25T06:24:24ZDo pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0010271https://doaj.org/article/ce77519cfa94437aa37d3a6e6138a9c62010-04-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/20422014/pdf/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203The growing competition and "publish or perish" culture in academia might conflict with the objectivity and integrity of research, because it forces scientists to produce "publishable" results at all costs. Papers are less likely to be published and to be cited if they report "negative" results (results that fail to support the tested hypothesis). Therefore, if publication pressures increase scientific bias, the frequency of "positive" results in the literature should be higher in the more competitive and "productive" academic environments. This study verified this hypothesis by measuring the frequency of positive results in a large random sample of papers with a corresponding author based in the US. Across all disciplines, papers were more likely to support a tested hypothesis if their corresponding authors were working in states that, according to NSF data, produced more academic papers per capita. The size of this effect increased when controlling for state's per capita R&D expenditure and for study characteristics that previous research showed to correlate with the frequency of positive results, including discipline and methodology. Although the confounding effect of institutions' prestige could not be excluded (researchers in the more productive universities could be the most clever and successful in their experiments), these results support the hypothesis that competitive academic environments increase not only scientists' productivity but also their bias. The same phenomenon might be observed in other countries where academic competition and pressures to publish are high.Daniele FanelliPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 5, Iss 4, p e10271 (2010)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Daniele Fanelli Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.
description	The growing competition and "publish or perish" culture in academia might conflict with the objectivity and integrity of research, because it forces scientists to produce "publishable" results at all costs. Papers are less likely to be published and to be cited if they report "negative" results (results that fail to support the tested hypothesis). Therefore, if publication pressures increase scientific bias, the frequency of "positive" results in the literature should be higher in the more competitive and "productive" academic environments. This study verified this hypothesis by measuring the frequency of positive results in a large random sample of papers with a corresponding author based in the US. Across all disciplines, papers were more likely to support a tested hypothesis if their corresponding authors were working in states that, according to NSF data, produced more academic papers per capita. The size of this effect increased when controlling for state's per capita R&D expenditure and for study characteristics that previous research showed to correlate with the frequency of positive results, including discipline and methodology. Although the confounding effect of institutions' prestige could not be excluded (researchers in the more productive universities could be the most clever and successful in their experiments), these results support the hypothesis that competitive academic environments increase not only scientists' productivity but also their bias. The same phenomenon might be observed in other countries where academic competition and pressures to publish are high.
format	article
author	Daniele Fanelli
author_facet	Daniele Fanelli
author_sort	Daniele Fanelli
title	Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.
title_short	Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.
title_full	Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.
title_fullStr	Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.
title_full_unstemmed	Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.
title_sort	do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? an empirical support from us states data.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2010
url	https://doaj.org/article/ce77519cfa94437aa37d3a6e6138a9c6
work_keys_str_mv	AT danielefanelli dopressurestopublishincreasescientistsbiasanempiricalsupportfromusstatesdata
_version_	1718413769620586496

Do pressures to publish increase scientists' bias? An empirical support from US States Data.

Ejemplares similares