One development that Lehrer does not discuss, and that we believe has the potential to exacerbate the “decline effect,” is the trend toward the publication of brief reports in mainstream psychology journals. Traditionally, an article in experimental psychology consisted of at least three experiments, the first demonstrating an important finding, and the others replicating it and establishing its boundary conditions. Today, there is a move away from such articles and toward one-experiment papers reporting a single unexpected result. Short reports demand less time of authors, reviewers, and readers, but an undesirable consequence is that findings are less likely to be replicated even by the investigators who first publish them. This increases the likelihood that a result initially received as exciting and novel will turn out to be nothing but a fluke.
Editor, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
John M. Henderson
Editor, Visual Cognition
Professors of Psychology
University of South Carolina