Saw this on another list (a yahoogroup). Thought it might be of interest to the odd person:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2850928/?tool=pmcentrez
Controlling for observed differences between pure and applied disciplines, and between papers testing one or several hypotheses, the odds of reporting a positive result were around
5 times higher among papers in the disciplines of Psychology and Psychiatry and Economics and Business compared to Space Science
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2850928/?tool=pmcentrez
"Positive" Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences
Daniele Fanelli
NNOGEN and ISSTI-Institute for the Study of Science, Technology & Innovation, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Enrico Scalas, Editor
University of East Piedmont, Italy
E-mail: dfanelli@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
Conceived and designed the experiments: DF. Performed the experiments: DF. Analyzed the data: DF. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DF. Wrote the paper: DF.
Received November 20, 2009; Accepted March 1, 2010.
Abstract
The hypothesis of a Hierarchy of the Sciences with physical sciences at the top, social sciences at the bottom, and biological sciences in-between is nearly 200 years old.
This order is intuitive and reflected in many features of academic life, but whether it reflects the "hardness" of scientific researchi.e., the extent to which research questions and results are determined by data and theories as opposed to non-cognitive factorsis controversial.
This study analysed 2434 papers published in all disciplines and that declared to have tested a hypothesis.
It was determined how many papers reported a "positive" (full or partial) or "negative" support for the tested hypothesis.
If the hierarchy hypothesis is correct, then researchers in "softer" sciences should have fewer constraints to their conscious and unconscious biases, and therefore report more positive outcomes.
Results confirmed the predictions at all levels considered: discipline, domain and methodology broadly defined.
Controlling for observed differences between pure and applied disciplines, and between papers testing one or several hypotheses, the odds of reporting a positive result were around
5 times higher among papers in the disciplines of Psychology and Psychiatry and Economics and Business compared to Space Science,
2.3 times higher in the domain of social sciences compared to the physical sciences, and
3.4 times higher in studies applying behavioural and social methodologies on people compared to physical and chemical studies on non-biological material.
In all comparisons, biological studies had intermediate values.
These results suggest that the nature of hypotheses tested and the logical and methodological rigour employed to test them vary systematically across disciplines and fields, depending on the complexity of the subject matter and possibly other factors (e.g., a field's level of historical and/or intellectual development).
On the other hand, these results support the scientific status of the social sciences against claims that they are completely subjective, by showing that, when they adopt a scientific approach to discovery, they differ from the natural sciences only by a matter of degree.
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Cases of "pathological science", in which a wrong theory or non-existent phenomenon are believed for many years and are "supported" by empirical data, have been observed in all fields, from parapsychology to physics [35].
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Negative results by discipline, dimension and domain
Space Science had the lowest percentage of positive results (70.2%) and Psychology and Psychiatry the highest (91.5%).
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When correcting for the confounding effect of presence/absence of multiple hypotheses, the odds of reporting a positive result were around five times higher for papers published in Psychology and Psychiatry and Economics and Business than in Space Science
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The biasing effect of researchers' expectations is increasingly recognized in all disciplines including physics [58], [59], but has been most extensively documented in the behavioural sciences [60], [61].
Indeed, behavioural data, which is inherently noisy and open to interpretation, might be particularly at risk from unconscious biases.
Behavioural studies on people have an even higher risk of bias because the subjects of study can be subconsciously aware of researchers' expectations, and behave accordingly [25], [26], [62].
Therefore, experimenter effects might explain why behavioural studies yield more positive results on humans than non-humans.
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2D-Prevalence and strength of manipulation of data and results
Several factors are hypothesised to increase scientists' propensity to falsify research, including: the likelihood of being caught, consequences of being caught, the costs of producing data compared to publishing them, strong belief in one's preferred theories, financial interests, etc[65], [66], [67], [68].
Each of these factors leads to straightforward predictions on where misconduct is most likely to occur (e.g., in fields where competition is high, replicability is low, conflicts of interest are high, etc), which very few studies to date have verified empirically.
Survey data suggests that outright scientific misconduct is relatively rare compared to more subtle forms of bias, although it is probably higher than commonly assumed, particularly in medical/clinical research [69].
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