Publication bias in academic journals is nothing new. A finding of no correlation between sporting events and either violent cri

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问题    Publication bias in academic journals is nothing new. A finding of no correlation between sporting events and either violent crime or property crime may be analytically top class, but you couldn’t be blamed, frankly, for not giving a damn. 【F1】But if journal editors are more interested in surprising or dramatic results, there is a danger that the final selection of published papers offers a distorted vision of reality.
   This should skew the distribution of published results, towards more "significant" findings. But a paper just published in a journal finds evidence of a different sort of bias, closer to the source. The results suggest that among the results that are only just significant, 10-20% have been made up.
   【F2】One explanation is that if a result shows up as significant at the 5% significance level (the industry standard) then researchers crack open the champagne and move on to making economics jokes. But if the result is ridiculously close to a positive result then perhaps the researchers will mess about a bit with their method... and celebrate their nice publisher-friendly result. 【F3】One of the paper’s authors explains that in economics it is difficult to conduct controlled experiments, which ultimately gives a lot of freedom to researchers to twist their methods. Sometimes researchers are twisting because they want to find the best way of estimating an effect, but sometimes it’s in the search for a significant effect The distinction might be hazy, even in their own minds.
   【F4】This is worrying for those trying to interpret and communicate the latest research, as it is impossible to tell if there has been foul play in any individual study. But more fundamentally it is worrying for the profession and policymakers making decisions based on economic evidence; being idle and running multiple, slightly different tests on the same data rapidly sucks meaning from the reported size and accuracy of the final results.
   Various solutions have been proposed. 【F5】One is to publish "pre-analysis plans", where researchers say how they will do their analysis before they actually do it. Another is to encourage more copy. To avoid the embarrassment of a non-result, researchers should be stricter with themselves when it comes to twisting their results. When sample sizes are small, this fix is difficult, as halving the sample power from tests. But in a world of big data, it could work. The bigger barrier might be getting career-conscious researchers to sign up.
【F3】

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答案其中一位论文的作者解释道,在经济学领域进行控制实验很难,这最终只会给研究者充分的自由来调整研究方法。

解析 ①本句是复合句。主句主干为主谓宾结构,that引导从句作主句explains的宾语。②此宾语从句为主系表结构,it是形式主语,真正主语是不定式短语to conduct controlled experiments;controlled experiments为专业术语,意为“对照试验”。③逗号后的是which引导的非限制性定语从句,修饰逗号前的宾语从句;ultimately表示“最后,最终”,twist表示“歪曲,扭曲”。
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