UNDERREPORTING FOLLOW-UP STUDIES. This Economist article reports on the low status of scientific studies which follow up on novel scientific theories. A team headed by Dr. Francis Gonon of the University of Bordeaux looked at the ten papers on attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (“ADHD”) which received the most newspaper coverage in English-language newspapers in the decade of the nineties. These papers received 223 write-ups in newspapers. In contrast, there were 67 later studies examining the conclusions of the original papers—and these studies were covered in only 57 newspaper articles. The Economist notes that “the press has a natural bias towards the new and exciting”, and points out that the original papers were published in more prestigious journals than the follow-up studies.
Replication of scientific results is critical to the scientific method, and the Gonon study illustrates that replication studies are undervalued.