

Funnel Plots and Publication Bias - yummyfajitas
http://lesswrong.com/lw/8nc/funnel_plots_the_study_that_didnt_bark_or/

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tokenadult
I participate in the same behavioral genetics seminar attended by Tom Bouchard
and his colleagues

<http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall10/psy8935/default.htm>

from the University of Minnesota Twin Study most weeks during the school year,
in an effort to learn more about the latest research on human behavioral
genetics. The larger lesson here is that most initial studies of genetic
associations with ANYTHING of interest in human beings get a lot of press from
their gee-whiz value. Human beings have a cognitive bias toward assuming that
their differences with other human beings are a matter of nature rather than
nurture, if the other person can be deemed to be inferior. (The fundamental
attribution error in psychology

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error>

results in most human beings most of the time concluding that their own faults
and foibles are an outcome of the press of circumstances, while the other
person's faults are mostly an outcome of the other person being a bad person
by nature.) In fact, what human genetic research has shown over and over and
over again is that any one genetic influence (from any one gene) on human
behavior is very small indeed, usually all but undetectable even in large
sample sizes, and that many human characteristics thought to be highly
controlled by genes (highly "heritiable") are exquisitely sensitive to
environmental influences.

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer%20\(2011\)%20commentaryvariation.txt)

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Turkheimer_darnimrod%20comm%20\(2011\).pdf)

[http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...](http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20Online%20CV/Johnson%20\(2009\).pdf)

It will take a long time for the general public and people who mostly read
blogs to get their information about science to catch up with what the
professional research literature says on this point, especially because human
cognitive biases run against understanding the facts on this issue. But if the
research program continues thoughtfully, we may eventually have opportunity to
form a more correct understanding of just how much and also how little
influence genes have on human behavior.

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v21
This is why clinical trial registries are so important. Unfortunately the last
I heard they were a confusing mess, with many not actually providing the
openness that was necessary for them to be effective.

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ggchappell
What about "publish or perish"? If you spend a year doing a study, then I'd
say you're going to publish the results, particularly if a lack of
publications is going to mean that you're denied tenure or promotion.

That doesn't square well with the data here.

One possible explanation (and I'm open to others) is that the data shown here
are not necessarily representative, but were selected to illustrate a
particular idea.

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carbocation
This particular plot appears to show evidence of winner's curse rather than
publication bias.

