Sometimes Trust One Good Study

Not all literatures improve certainty: when a field is riddled with selection, flexible analysis, or low power, a single well‑designed, pre‑registered study can be more reliable than a biased collection of published papers. Readers and decision‑makers should evaluate the prevalence of publication bias (e.g., funnel‑plot asymmetry) before deferring to meta‑analytic consensus. — This reframes how journalists, policymakers, and the public should weigh evidence: quality and transparency can trump quantity when aggregated evidence is corrupted.