Proteus phenomenon

From HandWiki
Short description: Phenomenon in scientific publishing


The Proteus phenomenon is the tendency in science for early replications of a work to contradict the original findings, a consequence of publication bias.[1] It is akin to the winner's curse.[2]

The term was coined by John Ioannidis and Thomas A. Trikalinos in 2005 named after the Greek god Proteus who could rapidly change his appearance.[3] A 2013 paper argued that the phenomenon might be "desirable or even optimal" from a scientific standpoint.[4]

See also

References

  1. Pfeiffer, Thomas; Bertram, Lars; Ioannidis, John (2011). "Quantifying selective reporting and the Proteus phenomenon for multiple datasets with similar bias". PLoS ONE 6 (3): e18362. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018362. PMID 21479240. Bibcode2011PLoSO...618362P. 
  2. Button, Katherine S. (2013). "Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience". Nature Reviews Neuroscience 14 (5): 365–376. doi:10.1038/nrn3475. PMID 23571845. 
  3. Ioannidis, JP; Trikalinos, TA (2005). "Early extreme contradictory estimates may appear in published research: The Proteus phenomenon in molecular genetics research and randomised trials". Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 58 (6): 543–549. doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2004.10.019. PMID 15878467. 
  4. de Winter, Joost; Happee, Riender (20 June 2013). "Why Selective Publication of Statistically Significant Results Can Be Effective". PLOS ONE 8 (6): e66463. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066463. PMID 23840479. PMC 3688764. Bibcode2013PLoSO...866463D. https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora/object/uuid%3A3b46f593-9d00-47ba-983d-d3af5cc18e93/datastream/OBJ/download.