What Is a Meta-Analysis?

The very act of setting up a tightly controlled experiment is more likely to produce false positives than it is to produce misses. The idea of a meta-analysis is based upon the notion that if you have more data, you're going to get closer and closer to the truth. All the problems with MRI experiments in particular are expensive and relatively few subjects are run compared to others. What this means is that the work is heavily dependent upon the method.