File drawer problem

The file drawer problem is a term used to describe how researchers may hide their studies that don't show what they were looking for. For example, you might have done multiple studies on whether a certain medicine could help with colds, but if the results show that it does not help, you might not want to publish the results. This means that you might put them in a “file drawer” and not report the results. This can be a problem because other researchers who want to learn about the medicine won’t see that the studies showed it doesn’t work, and may end up wasting their time doing more research on something that doesn’t help.