Small studies more often yield spurious results a propagandist can exploit
Evidence
Imagine flipping a coin that comes up heads 70 percent of the time, and you want to figure out whether it is weighted toward heads or toward tails. (This, of course, is analogous to the problem faced by scientists in our models.) If you flip this coin sixty times, the chances are very high that there will be more heads overall. Your study is quite likely to point you in the right direction. But if you flip the coin just once, there is a 30 percent chance that your study will mislead you into thinking the coin is weighted toward tails. In other words, the more data points you gather, the higher the chances that they will reflect the true effect. — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 365
Categorization
- SHARE: A clean coin-flip intuition pump worth sending to anyone who teaches research methods or science communication.
- XREF: connects to: Industry cherry-picking is continuous with ordinary scientific publication bias — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 359; Low-powered studies disproportionately feed industry propaganda — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False…, 386; Hunting through multidimensional data produces spurious significant findings. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 602 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Low-powered studies disproportionately feed industry propaganda
#corroborates(0.95) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 386 - Hunting through multidimensional data produces spurious significant findings.
#qualifies(0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 602 - Concentrating research funding can make science more propaganda-proof
#responds-to(0.72) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 384