No abstract

Times are changing, bias isn't: A meta-meta-analysis on publication bias detection practices, prevalence rates, and predictors in industrial/organizational psychology.

Wind conditions are well-known to affect results of ski jumping competitions. To alleviate effects of different head or tail winds and differences in inrun length due to jury or coaches' decisions, the FIS (Fé deration Internationale de Ski) has adopted a wind and gate compensation system since January 2010. However, the accuracy and fairness of the resulting compensation points are often questioned by athletes, spectators, and media commentators alike but have not yet been thoroughly investigated. In the present meta-analysis, we present evidence for systematic negative associations of wind points but positive associations of gate points with round scores across all World Cup and World Championship competitions of men in the ski jumping seasons 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 (k = 35 and 30, respectively). Moreover, our results indicate that absolute correlations between wind points and round scores increased in presence of larger wind point variability, thus indicating lower accuracy of compensation systems when conditions are more variable. Additionally, there was a trend for larger wind point malcompensations on larger jumping hills. Our results suggest that the current wind point compensation formula as well as gate factors should be reevaluated to prevent systematically biased point awards within and across competitions.

Inflated or outright false effects plague Psychological Science, but advances in the identification of dissemination biases in general and publication bias in particular have helped in dealing with biased effects in the literature. However, the application of publication bias detection methods appears to be not equally prevalent across subdisciplines. It has been suggested that particularly in I/O Psychology, appropriate publication bias detection methods are underused. In this meta-meta-analysis, we present prevalence estimates, predictors, and time trends of publication bias in 128 meta-analyses that were published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (7,263 effect sizes, 3,000,000+ participants). Moreover, we reanalyzed data of 87 meta-analyses and applied nine standard and more modern publication bias detection methods. We show that (i) the bias detection method applications are underused (only 41% of meta-analyses use at least one method) but have increased in recent years, (ii) those meta-analyses that apply such methods now use more, but mostly inappropriate methods, and (iii) the prevalence of publication bias is disconcertingly high (15% to 20% show severe, 33% to 48% some bias indication) but mostly remains undetected. Although our results indicate somewhat of a trend towards higher bias awareness, they also indicate that concerns about publication bias in I/O Psychology are justified and researcher awareness about appropriate and state-of-the-art bias detection needs to be further increased. Embracing open science practices such as data sharing or study preregistration is needed to raise reproducibility and ultimately strengthen Psychological Science in general and I/O Psychology in particular.