W&H evaluated the performance of the selective publishing and publishing everything approaches using a straightforward simulation study that involved one scenario in which the population was normally distributed with mean and standard deviation equal 0.3 and 1, respectively. All primary studies in the scenario had a sample size of 50. W&H repeated the simulation 5,000 times, and each simulation was stopped when 40 studies were published in the selective publishing approach. W&H found that the standard deviation of the cumulative meta-analytic effect across all 5,000 replications as a function of publication number was smaller in the selective publishing than in the publishing everything approach (W&H's Figure 3). More specifically, the standard deviation after 40 publications was .0170 for selective publishing compared to the higher .0222 for publishing everything, and 68 studies were needed in publishing everything for reaching the same accuracy obtained after 40 publications in selective publishing ([1], p. 5). Based on these comparisons W&H concluded that the file drawer effect can be beneficial for the scientific collective.
