Conservative strategies (15) serve individual careers well but are less effective for science as a whole.
Such strategies are amplified by the file drawer problem (16): Negative results, at odds with
established hypotheses, are rarely published, leading to a systemic bias in published research
and the canonization of weak and sometimes false facts (17). More risky hypotheses may have
been tested by generations of scientists, but only those successful enough to result in publications
are known to us. One way to alleviate this conservative trap is to urge funding agencies to proactively
sponsor risky projects that test truly unexplored hypotheses and take on special interest
groups advocating for particular diseases.

而且这一学科还存在所谓的“文件抽屉问题”（file-drawer problem，也叫发表偏倚），也就是，研究人员往往会发表罕见的成功结果，而忽略他们实验中的大量失败结果，从而使某种侥幸结果看上去很像突破性进展。不论公正与否，社会心理学家确实被认为是对自己的实验方法并不那么严格的研究群体，他们一般不会重复自己或其他人的工作，而是加紧进行下一项能写出惊人标题的论文的研究。