Slashdot Mirror

Which is why you should be reading Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis.

Sometimes it's also:
* Sloppiness in documentation (the experiment might have been rigorous, but the paper didn't detail it all.)
* Random chance. If we have a p=0.1 result say (a rather bad figure), there's a 10% chance the result happened by chance. p=0.05? 5% chance. This in itself isn't that bad (it's very hard to be 100% certain) - except that researchers that don't get results? They do nothing with the data. Generally, only results that actually are statistically significant are published -- so if the experiment is done 10 times across the world, but the one time of those ten it works by chance, and the other nine times aren't published because they didn't work, we end up with papers being published more by chance.

To combat the latter, you should read Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis, which tries to be a journal of articles where there were no statistically significant differences from the 'nothing happened' result.

Just taking this quick opportunity to post a link to my favorite journal, the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis: http://www.jasnh.com/ .

JASNH is one of the few places where you can submit a paper that says "we tested for X effect on Y and found no evidence that X affects Y". Generally this research is unpublishable and people will tweak parameters to get something career-advancing out of their research; I like JASNH because of the reminder that "falsifiability" can really happen.

http://www.jasnh.com/
from the website:
Welcome to the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis. In the past other journals and reviewers have exhibited a bias against articles that did not reject the null hypothesis. We seek to change that by offering an outlet for experiments that do not reach the traditional significance levels (p .05). Thus, reducing the file drawer problem, and reducing the bias in psychological literature. Without such a resource researchers could be wasting their time examining empirical questions that have already been examined. We collect these articles and provide them to the scientific community free of cost.

JASNH is published online bi-yearly.

This is exactly why the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis was created. We should be hearing about these results but other journals are biased against their publication.

At least one such exists:
Journal of Atricles in Support of the Null Hypothesis

Some people agree with you, for instance:
Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis

Perhaps the place to put such a study if you happen to find one is the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (that is, the statement of the ordinary which an experiment attempts to show is significantly less likely than an alternative hypothesis.)

I love the JASNH, even though it doesn't publish very frequently. They publish such varied and wonderful experiments as the one in which 'females showed overall preferences for strong mates, as well as for mates who were 7.7" taller and 44.5 pounds heavier than themselves' irrespective of fear-priming. Another favorite was the one where they proved that ugly babies aren't more likely to be neglected by caregivers.

While the JASNH is primarily focused on psychological studies, they've published papers on HIV risk and immunodepressants. If you're a research scientist who happens to be reading /., and you have a drawer full of useless results, consider writing it up and submitting it. (Carcinogen research would be especially interesting as per this article, as would *duck* global warming studies.)

Perhaps the place to put such a study if you happen to find one is the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (that is, the statement of the ordinary which an experiment attempts to show is significantly less likely than an alternative hypothesis.)

I love the JASNH, even though it doesn't publish very frequently. They publish such varied and wonderful experiments as the one in which 'females showed overall preferences for strong mates, as well as for mates who were 7.7" taller and 44.5 pounds heavier than themselves' irrespective of fear-priming. Another favorite was the one where they proved that ugly babies aren't more likely to be neglected by caregivers.

While the JASNH is primarily focused on psychological studies, they've published papers on HIV risk and immunodepressants. If you're a research scientist who happens to be reading /., and you have a drawer full of useless results, consider writing it up and submitting it. (Carcinogen research would be especially interesting as per this article, as would *duck* global warming studies.)

Perhaps the place to put such a study if you happen to find one is the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (that is, the statement of the ordinary which an experiment attempts to show is significantly less likely than an alternative hypothesis.)

I love the JASNH, even though it doesn't publish very frequently. They publish such varied and wonderful experiments as the one in which 'females showed overall preferences for strong mates, as well as for mates who were 7.7" taller and 44.5 pounds heavier than themselves' irrespective of fear-priming. Another favorite was the one where they proved that ugly babies aren't more likely to be neglected by caregivers.

While the JASNH is primarily focused on psychological studies, they've published papers on HIV risk and immunodepressants. If you're a research scientist who happens to be reading /., and you have a drawer full of useless results, consider writing it up and submitting it. (Carcinogen research would be especially interesting as per this article, as would *duck* global warming studies.)