A recent essay in Nature’s Worldview column by Jonathan Schooler from the University of California at Santa Barbara points out a plausible way to overcome the so-called decline effect. The decline effect denotes the phenomenon that exciting scientific findings often tend to fade over time. First discovered in statistical analysis in parapsychology, this anomaly turned out to be also present in other scientific disciplines like biology and medicine. The reasons for the decline effect remain unknown, but possible explanations often refer to the fact that “science is done by people” as Werner Heisenberg famously remarked. The decline effect could be either related to the way scientists set up their experiments and collect and review their results, but it may also be due to the scientific journals’ acceptance policy. However, we cannot decide upon this question as negative results are generally not accessible via the established scientific journals. Professor Schooler suggest an open-access repository to collect well-conducted scientific studies, regardless of outcome, to overcome this limitation and he adds that such a project would face considerable challenges. But still, this idea deserves attention and the Journal of Unsolved Questions is convinced that it will serve as such a platform and help to clarify the decline effect.
Read the article here: J. Schooler, Nature 470, 437 (2011).