A new Cochrane Collaboration review of medical literature shows that positive results of studies tend to get published -- and publicized -- more often than those showing a negative result.
In other earth-shattering news, the sun rose in the east this morning.
Cochrane Collaborative researchers found that trials are 1.78 times more likely to be published "if they are perceived as important, reveal a positive effect or offer scientifically significant findings." Cochrane's research found that just 41 percent of negative trials showing a drug or treatment either has no effect or possible bad effects were printed.
Snark aside, there's a serious downside to the publication of primarily positive results from studies, according to Kay Dickersin, director of the U.S. Cochrane Center at John Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. .
"If positive results are published more often than negative, what we think we know isn't really what we know. We might think a drug works, when it really doesn't work, because the negative results haven't been published," said Dickersin in a press release.
And, yes, smarty pants, the Cochrane study was, indeed, published in the latest issue of The Cochrane Library.
