Unpublishable research: examining and organizing the 'file drawer'

The "file drawer" phenomenon: suppressing clinical evidence.

The "File Drawer Problem" and Tolerance for Null Results

For any given research area, one cannot tell how many studies have been conducted but never reported. The extreme view of the "file drawer problem" is that journals are filled with the 5% of the studies that show Type I errors, while the file drawers are filled with the 95% of the studies that show nonsignificant results. Quantitative procedures for computing the tolerance for filed and future ...

Infant day-care, attachment, and the "file drawer problem".

The research literature on infant day-care and attachment may be biased by the unavailability of "file drawer" studies, unpublished data showing no statistically significant effects. Replication studies, whether showing an effect or not, are essential to clarify the relation between day-care and attachment. This study of 105 12-month-olds is an attempt to replicate four similar studies summariz...

Lunar cycle effects on sleep and the file drawer problem

470 sleep EEGs from 366 healthy participants in a light-controlled sleep laboratory (see Experimental Procedures in Supplemental Information, published with this article online). Lunar classes were defined as previously [2], with lunar class 1 representing full moon ± 4 nights, lunar class 2 covering the waxing and waning moon periods (full moon ± 5–9 nights) and lunar class 3 representing new ...

Bias in the Social Sciences : Unlocking the File Drawer