In their simulation study, W&H compared two approaches to scientific publishing in a scenario involving a hypothetical line of research on a given topic. All of W&H's simulations assumed that one underlying population effect gave rise to the study outcomes (i.e., a fixed effect in the parlance of meta-analysis). In W&H's first approach (“publishing everything”) all results were published regardless of their outcome. In their second approach (“selective publishing”), results were published if they deviated significantly from the earlier evidence as presented in the literature. We remark that the notion that all results are published does not match well with the overwhelming evidence of the file-drawer problem in many academic fields [16]–[21], although it is optimal in the statistical sense that more information is better. On the other hand, the selective publishing approach may be problematic for the accumulation of knowledge because it would impede the publication of corroborating evidence of earlier findings.
