So a just-published study claims.
According to Monday’s article in Nature:
Unconscious biases may drive researchers to overestimate their findings.
US behavioural researchers have been handed a dubious distinction — they are more likely than their colleagues in other parts of the world to exaggerate findings, according to a study published today.
Which is interesting because the guy whose research dodges kicked off the recent flurry was Dutch.
The researchers into the problem
found that, worldwide, behavioural studies were more likely than non-behavioural studies to report ‘extreme effects’ — findings that deviated from the overall effects reported by the meta-analyses.? And US-based behavioural researchers were more likely than behavioural researchers elsewhere to report extreme effects that deviated in favour of their starting hypotheses.
“It has to be because of methodological choices made before the study is submitted,” Fanelli says, possibly under pressure from the ‘publish or perish’ mentality that takes hold when career progress depends on high-profile publications. More.
Study: Fanelli, D. & Ioannidis, J. P. A. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1302997110 (2013).