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Predatory Publishers & Other Bad Actors

Publication bias is any tendency on the parts of investigators or editors to fail to publish study results on the basis of the direction or strength of the study findings.

-Dickersin, K., & Min, Y. (1993). Publication bias: The problem that won't go away. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 703, 136-148. 

Publication bias suggests that negative or null findings often aren't reflected in the scholarly record, which means we don't always have the full picture of a drug's effectiveness or impact, for example. If all we see in the literature are the cases where the drug was successful, we could have a false impression that it is always and only successful. This could be misleading at best, dangerous at worst.

See Does Publication Bias Inflate the Apparent Efficacy of Psychological Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of US National Institutes of Health-Funded Trials as an example.

See the videos below for more.