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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

"Are you asking for a study? I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say."

Yes. Every few months I see a new study about how academic research grants are handed out more or less at random, how journals are heavily biased toward positive results, how journals are biased toward authors with previous citations, etc.

All this seriously challenges the claim that if you have sufficient evidence you will get published by a top journal.

Similarly, is there any evidence for the claim that, "If n observers each detect a falsehood with probability p then the probability of missing the falsehood is (1-p)^n."

Go ask Kitty Genovese about the validity of this formula.

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The question is not "are journals biased?" The question is, are more respected journals less likely to publish a falsehood? If the "better" journals have more accurate reviewers or more reviewers then yeah, they will publish fewer falsehoods.

Re: the formula (1-p)^n. It's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_distribution . If the observers are independent then the formula holds. If they're not then it holds approximately according to how dependent the different observers are.

"The question is not "are journals biased?" The question is, are more respected journals less likely to publish a falsehood?"

What you said originally was that if the author's evidence was sufficient then he would have been able to get in published in a better journal. But if you're admitting that journals are biased, then surely you must see that your original assertion doesn't always --or maybe even often-- hold. Maybe it's true, but I'm certainly not willing to accept it on faith.

"If the "better" journals have more accurate reviewers or more reviewers then yeah, they will publish fewer falsehoods."

Your definition of 'better' journals sounds like a tautology. How do you know that 'better' journals have better reviewers? Can you actually prove that having better reviewers is what makes 'better' journals better?

I'd certainly be willing to be persuaded by evidence, but right now I believe that the best journals are the ones with the best vetting process about as much as I believe the best vodka is the one that costs the most, the world's best author is the one with the most sales, etc.

The Kitty Genovese killing isn't a good example of the bystander effect, as the police were contacted at least once during the attack and most people who heard it could not see it happening.

http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/uploads/MarkLevine200706...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037%2F0003-066X.62.6.555

From the abstract:

> Using archive material we show that there is no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive.

(Further, why mention the bystander effect at all? It's a little confusing)

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