Do Funders Sink Education Research, Too?
Check out this free Wall Street Journal article about just how misleading and self-interested drug research has been (Antidepressants Under Scrutiny). I know there are an awful lot of rose-colored results out there in education research, but apparently drug companies routinely conduct but don't report studies that come out with "negative" results (ie, don't show benefits for their drugs), and the FDA doesn't track these disappearing studies, meaning that drugs are a lot less effective than your doctor knows or the ads say. It's hard to believe, but neither the companies nor the researchers are under any legal obligation to report the results of these negative studies. Does this happen in education research, too, or are the studies set up so broadly that the results are going to come out positive no matter what?