title: Excess success for psychology articles in the journal science.
abstract: This article describes a systematic analysis of the relationship between empirical data and theoretical conclusions for a set of experimental psychology articles published in the journal Science between 2005-2012. When the success rate of a set of empirical studies is much higher than would be expected relative to the experiments' reported effects and sample sizes, it suggests that null findings have been suppressed, that the experiments or analyses were inappropriate, or that the theory does not properly follow from the data. The analyses herein indicate such excess success for 83% (15 out of 18) of the articles in Science that report four or more studies and contain sufficient information for the analysis. This result suggests a systematic pattern of excess success among psychology articles in the journal Science.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States of America and Brain Mind Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Gregory
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Francis
authors.affiliation: Tanzman Statistical Consulting, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jay
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tanzman
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: William J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Matthews
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D017712:Peer Review, Research; D010506:Periodicals as Topic; D011589:Psychology, Experimental / Q000639:trends*; D012106:Research