False Negative/Positive Rate (IMAGE)

University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute

False Negative/Positive Rate

Caption

The figure shows a false negative rate of 0.2 (which is the standard that many fields of science use). The standard for the false positive rate is 0.05 (the white/yellow line), but there are indications that it is higher in practice. The figure shows that if you publish less than 20-30 percent negative results, there will be a high probability that a false hypothesis will be perceived as being a fact after repeated experiments and published articles. The scientific community only avoid this if they publish a greater proportion of negative results.

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(Credit: Nissen, NBI and Bergstrom, UW)

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(Credit: Nissen, NBI and Bergstrom, UW)

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