fig1

Figure 1. The (well-justified) emphasis on innovation and significance tends to favor publication and funding of improbable observations with impressive positive results. Typically, surprising findings that challenge existing concepts and support a mechanism with a low pre-study probability, are perceived as novel, and are more likely to be published in high-impact journals. Moreover, interventional studies are considered “highly significant” when strongly positive effects are found. Studies perceived as highly innovative and/or highly significant (red arrows) are selectively published, and are also more likely to attract funding. Moreover, these competitive advantages of high innovation/high-significance findings exert pressures on success-driven investigators that may generate additional investigator-dependent intentional or non-intentional bias. In contrast, findings supporting more plausible, high-probability concepts, or interventions producing modest or negative effects are considered much less exciting, have a lower chance of publication in high-impact journals, and may not attract research funding. These patterns in publication priority, research funding and dissemination of study results paint a biased perspective of a field, disproportionately rewarding improbable observations that report high-magnitude effects.