Nature has a piece
called Unpublished results hide the decline effect
This refers to the fact that many scientific findings which seem to indicate something big is happening, end up getting smaller and smaller as more people try to replicate them until they, eventually, may vanish entirely.
The Last Psychiatrist's take is that "The Decline Effect" just represents sloppy thinking, treating different things as if they were all instances of The One True Phenomenon. Someone does a study about something and finds an effect. Then someone else comes along and does a new study, of a related but different topic, and finds a different result. Both are right: there's a difference. Only if you, sloppily, decide that both studies were measuring the same thing does the "Decline Effect" appear.
This is perfectly true and I've touched on it before, but I think it's a bit optimistic. It assumes that ...
