the larger the trial size, the smaller the outcome
I find this a bit surprising. Could there be something else affecting the accuracy of larger trials? Perhaps they are not as careful, or cutting corners somewhere?
I find this a bit surprising. Could there be something else affecting the accuracy of larger trials? Perhaps they are not as careful, or cutting corners somewhere?
Basically, the possibility that the small study was underpowered, and just lucky...then the large studies with more power are closer to the truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization
Then the supposed big effect attracts attention and ultimately properly designed studies which show no effect.
A study with 1000 individuals is likely a poor representation of a species of 8.2 billion. I understand that studies try to their best to use a diverse population, but I often question how successful many studies are at this endeavor.
If that's the case, we should question whether different homogeneous population groups respond differently to the substance under test. After all, we don't want to know the "average temperature of patients in a hospital", do we?
In terms of psychological treatments, I am honestly in support of this. Many mental illnesses can have a cultural component to them.
> After all, we don't want to know the "average temperature of patients in a hospital", do we?
No, I don't think we do. Am I understanding you correctly?
1. Small studies are more likely to give anomalous results by chance. If I pick three people at random, it's not that surprising if I happened to get three women. It would be a lot different if I sampled 1,000 people.
2. Studies that show any positive result tend to get published, and ones that don't tend to get binned.
Put those together, and you see a lot of tiny studies with small positive results. When you do a proper study, the effect goes away. Exactly as you would expect.
The less charitable effect is "they made it up". It happens.