Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the Publication Bias Workshop in London, organized by the NC3Rs, a British scientific organization.
The meeting was organized around the question of whether preregistration can be a solution for the problem of publication bias in medical research. I believe that it can, and I've been writing about this for several years. I didn't speak at the workshop, but the cause of preregistration was amply represented by speakers including Chris Chambers of the journal Cortex and Trish Groves of the BMJ. However, in the formal debate which concluded the first day, our side lost support in the audience vote by a fair margin. Whereas before the debate, a show of hands showed the great majority of the attendees to be in favor of preregistration, the vote after the debate revealed that many had changed their minds. What happened? In my opinion, the problem was ...
