Initial significant results often reflect chance and vanish on replication

Evidence

We have to remember that every now and then when p is < .05, nothing is actually there. But if a “gossamer finding” materializes the first time you study something, it may take you years to discover you are chasing “the stuff that dreams are made of.” — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 4096

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the replication crisis literature and to skeptical appraisal of any single p < .05 finding in the vault’s authoritarianism sources.