Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics,Institute of Psychiatry,Psychology and Neuroscience,King's College London,London,UK.
Psychol Med. 2018 May;48(7):1084-1091. doi: 10.1017/S003329171700294X. Epub 2017 Nov 27.
False positive findings in science are inevitable, but are they particularly common in psychology and psychiatry? The evidence that we review suggests that while not restricted to our field, the problem is acute. We describe the concept of researcher 'degrees-of-freedom' to explain how many false-positive findings arise, and how the various strategies of registration, pre-specification, and reporting standards that are being adopted both reduce and make these visible. We review possible benefits and harms of proposed statistical solutions, from tougher requirements for significance, to Bayesian and machine learning approaches to analysis. Finally we consider the organisation and methods for replication and systematic review in psychology and psychiatry.
科学研究中出现假阳性结果是不可避免的，但在心理学和精神病学领域是否更为常见呢？我们回顾的证据表明，虽然这种情况不限于我们的领域，但问题十分严重。我们描述了研究人员“自由度”的概念，以解释有多少假阳性结果是如何产生的，以及正在采用的登记、预先指定和报告标准等各种策略如何减少和使这些结果可见。我们回顾了拟议的统计解决方案的可能的益处和危害，从更严格的显著性要求，到贝叶斯和机器学习分析方法。最后，我们考虑了在心理学和精神病学领域进行复制和系统综述的组织和方法。
