RESEARCHERS EASILY PROVE FALSE FINDINGS

Using legitimate statistical analyses, researchers were able to show in an experiment that participants were nearly 1.5 years younger after listening to the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” than after listening to a song that comes with the Windows 7 operating system- an obviously ridiculous finding that demonstrates how easy it is for research to yield “false positives.” Too often, researchers aren’t aware of the high likelihood of finding false evidence, and the pressure to publish leads scientists to convince themselves of the validity of their findings.

Harvard Business Review
www.researchclue.com