A large majority of empirical evidence reported in leading economics journals is potentially misleading. Results reported to be statistically significant are about as likely to be misleading as not (falsely positive) and statistically nonsignificant results are much more likely to be misleading (falsely negative). We also compare observational to experimental research and find that the quality of experimental economic evidence is notably higher.
I’m confused by this “falsely negative”. Like, without that, that part sounds like it’s saying something like
when a result is reported as “we observed a small effect here, but it wasn’t statistically significant”, then more often than not, there’s no real effect there
but that’s a false positive. If they’re saying it’s a false negative, it suggests something like
when a result is reported as statistically insignificant, that makes it sound like there’s no effect there, but more often than not there actually is an effect
...but that’s (a) not a natural reading of that part and (b) surely not true.
I’m confused by this “falsely negative”. Like, without that, that part sounds like it’s saying something like
but that’s a false positive. If they’re saying it’s a false negative, it suggests something like
...but that’s (a) not a natural reading of that part and (b) surely not true.