I bring it up because there are so many areas now in social psychology where a result that someone might have questioned in the past and was told, are you kidding? The evidence is overwhelming. A meta-analysis is not going to fix the literature that is flawed. I mean, if every single study is flawed, you will get a flawed result from the meta-analysis. But just by looking at that universe of studies, you can really get a better understanding of what is going on here.
John Ioannidis of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his research on the reliability of published research findings. They discuss Ioannidis's recent study on bias in economics research, meta-analysis, the challenge of small sample analysis, and the reliability of statistical significance as a measure of success in empirical research.