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http://theconversation.com/how-a-st...-was-doctored-adding-to-pain-and-stigma-74890The public relies on scientists to report their findings accurately and completely, but that does not always happen. Too often, researchers announce only their most favorable outcomes, while keeping more disappointing results well out of sight.
This phenomenon, first identified by the psychologist Robert Rosenthal in 1979, is called the “file drawer problem.” Although it is widely recognized – affecting drug trials, psychology experiments and most other fields – it has seldom been documented, for obvious reasons. Suppressed results are, well, suppressed, and they are usually discovered only by chance.
It was therefore almost unprecedented when a group of patients, at the end of last year, successfully unmasked the skewed data behind an influential British study, first published in Lancet in 2011, of the devastating disease known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (sometimes called myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME/CFS).
Article by Steven Lubet, Professor of Law and signatory to the recent open letter on PACE.