The inner life
File-Drawer Problem
Direct answer
File-Drawer Problem: The file-drawer problem is the distortion that arises when studies with no result are left unpublished, so that the published record overstates how often and how strongly an effect is found.
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At a glance
- Also called
- file drawer effect, publication bias, file drawer problem, unpublished null results
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Parapsychology, Ganzfeld Experiment, Confirmation Bias, Psychokinesis
The file-drawer problem is the distortion that arises when studies with no result are left unpublished, so that the published record overstates how often and how strongly an effect is found.
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Why is it called the file-drawer problem?
Journals have long preferred to print studies that find something. A researcher whose experiment shows no effect may not submit it, or may have it turned down, and the report goes into a drawer. If twenty teams test a claim that is false, one is likely to get a striking result by chance, and that may be the only one the public ever sees. Anyone who then adds up the published studies finds an effect that is not there.
The problem touches all of science, medicine included, and has led to the registering of studies before they are run. It bears hard on parapsychology because the effects claimed there are small, about the size that selective publication alone can produce. Researchers in the field were among the first to estimate how many hidden studies it would take to cancel a result.
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What sets File-Drawer Problem apart
The file-drawer problem is a fault of the record and not of any single study. Each published experiment may be sound, and the body of them still mislead, because what was printed was selected by its result. It is hardest on claims of small effects, since chance alone turns out an occasional small effect. Rosenthal's remedy was a number: how many hidden null studies it would take to cancel the pooled finding.
- Named by: Robert Rosenthal, Psychological Bulletin, 1979
- Wider name: publication bias
- Measure: the fail-safe number of unpublished null studies
- Shown by: funnel plots, in which small studies lean one way
- Remedy: registering a study and its analysis before it is run
Often mistaken for something else: Confirmation bias works inside one mind, which keeps the hits; the file-drawer problem works across a whole literature, which prints them.
The story behind File-Drawer Problem
The psychologist Robert Rosenthal gave the problem its name in 1979 and proposed a way to calculate how many unpublished null studies would be needed to wipe out a pooled finding. The Parapsychological Association had adopted a policy in 1975 against the selective reporting of positive results. The wider replication debate in psychology after 2011 led journals to accept registered reports, judged before the data are in.
Why File-Drawer Problem matters
File-Drawer Problem is the main ordinary explanation for small effects that appear in pooled studies and fade in careful repetitions.
How to read File-Drawer Problem
Reviewers estimate it with funnel plots and fail-safe counts, and guard against it by registering a study and its analysis in advance.
File-Drawer Problem in practice: an example
Thirty studies are printed and twenty-four show an effect. Nobody knows how many quiet failures were never written up.
Where readings of File-Drawer Problem go wrong
A large pile of positive studies is weak evidence unless it is known how many studies were run in all.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- file drawer effect, publication bias, file drawer problem, unpublished null results
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Why is it called the file-drawer problem?
Because studies that find no effect tend to stay in the researcher's file drawer instead of being published. Robert Rosenthal used the image in a paper of 1979.
How does the file-drawer problem affect ESP research?
The effects reported are small. If even a modest number of null studies were never published, the average would fall to nothing, so reviewers argue over how many such studies there could be.
What is the fix for the file-drawer problem?
Registering each study, with its planned analysis, before it is run, and publishing the outcome whatever it is. Journals call these registered reports, and the Koestler unit at Edinburgh has kept a registry for parapsychology studies since 2012.
