scholarly journals Towards an Expanded Conception of Publication Bias

10.36850/mr2 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Nelson

This short essay argues for an expanded conception of publication bias. In addition to consideringthe selective publication of results, I argue that we need to also consider the selective publicationof epistemic by-products—observations and knowledge that scientists accumulate incidentallyin the process of carrying out their work. There are three reasons why we should be concernedabout the exclusion of epistemic by-products from the published literature: first, because theyplay an important role in robust replication attempts; second, because their absence can resultin misplaced scientific certainty; and third, because they contribute to a holistic understandingof natural phenomena. However, identifying and addressing publication bias against epistemicby-products and other undervalued forms of knowledge is more difficult than identifying biasagainst quantitative findings. I argue that scientific pluralism and making data publicly accessibleare two potential remedies for addressing this form of publication bias.

1988 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
C. P. Snyman

In view of the principle of actualism the early history of the earth must be explained on the basis of present-day natural phenomena and the basic Laws of Nature. The study of the solar system leads to the conclusion that the planets were formed as by-products when the sun developed from a rotating cloud of cosmic gas and dust. The protoplanets or planetesimals could have accreted as a result of mutual collisions, during which they could have become partly molten so that they could differentiate into a crust, a mantle and a core on the basis of differences in density.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 59-78
Author(s):  
Lech M. Nijakowski

The dominant approach in genocide studies focuses on the intentions and motives of mass murderers. However, in many cases, natural phenomena, pathogens and machines determine the nature and course of genocidal mobilization. The aim of this article is to present the advantages of the actor-network theory (ANT) in explaining genocidal mobilization, taking into account environmental factors. “Natural objects” have been selected from a rich catalogue of non-human actors. The author divides these objects into three classes, showing that pathogens (associated with “the asymmetry of resistance” of victims and perpetrators) and deserts are of key importance in the history of collective violence. Referring to specific cases (in particular, the conquest and colonization of the Americas and Australia, the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples, the Armenian genocide, Shoah), the author identifies that adopting the assumptions and methods of ANT reveals new aspects of the genocidal process. This indicates the need for considering the politics of non-human actors, delegating morality and law, tracking consecutive translations, rejecting the division into qualitatively different micro- and macro-actors, and tracking the emergence of new actants and forms of knowledge during genocide.


1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 179-187
Author(s):  
Clifford N. Matthews ◽  
Rose A. Pesce-Rodriguez ◽  
Shirley A. Liebman

AbstractHydrogen cyanide polymers – heterogeneous solids ranging in color from yellow to orange to brown to black – may be among the organic macromolecules most readily formed within the Solar System. The non-volatile black crust of comet Halley, for example, as well as the extensive orangebrown streaks in the atmosphere of Jupiter, might consist largely of such polymers synthesized from HCN formed by photolysis of methane and ammonia, the color observed depending on the concentration of HCN involved. Laboratory studies of these ubiquitous compounds point to the presence of polyamidine structures synthesized directly from hydrogen cyanide. These would be converted by water to polypeptides which can be further hydrolyzed to α-amino acids. Black polymers and multimers with conjugated ladder structures derived from HCN could also be formed and might well be the source of the many nitrogen heterocycles, adenine included, observed after pyrolysis. The dark brown color arising from the impacts of comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter might therefore be mainly caused by the presence of HCN polymers, whether originally present, deposited by the impactor or synthesized directly from HCN. Spectroscopic detection of these predicted macromolecules and their hydrolytic and pyrolytic by-products would strengthen significantly the hypothesis that cyanide polymerization is a preferred pathway for prebiotic and extraterrestrial chemistry.


Author(s):  
Sumio Iijima

We have developed a technique to prepare thin single crystal films of graphite for use as supporting films for high resolution electron microscopy. As we showed elsewhere (1), these films are completely noiseless and therefore can be used in the observation of phase objects by CTEM, such as single atoms or molecules as a means for overcoming the difficulties because of the background noise which appears with amorphous carbon supporting films, even though they are prepared so as to be less than 20Å thick. Since the graphite films are thinned by reaction with WO3 crystals under electron beam irradiation in the microscope, some small crystallites of WC or WC2 are inevitably left on the films as by-products. These particles are usually found to be over 10-20Å diameter but very fine particles are also formed on the film and these can serve as good test objects for studying the image formation of phase objects.


2019 ◽  
Vol 227 (4) ◽  
pp. 261-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Renkewitz ◽  
Melanie Keiner

Abstract. Publication biases and questionable research practices are assumed to be two of the main causes of low replication rates. Both of these problems lead to severely inflated effect size estimates in meta-analyses. Methodologists have proposed a number of statistical tools to detect such bias in meta-analytic results. We present an evaluation of the performance of six of these tools. To assess the Type I error rate and the statistical power of these methods, we simulated a large variety of literatures that differed with regard to true effect size, heterogeneity, number of available primary studies, and sample sizes of these primary studies; furthermore, simulated studies were subjected to different degrees of publication bias. Our results show that across all simulated conditions, no method consistently outperformed the others. Additionally, all methods performed poorly when true effect sizes were heterogeneous or primary studies had a small chance of being published, irrespective of their results. This suggests that in many actual meta-analyses in psychology, bias will remain undiscovered no matter which detection method is used.


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