Back

The Hypothesis Race Model for evaluation of research findings

Kelly, R. E.

2026-05-29 scientific communication and education
10.64898/2026.05.28.728385 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) remains the dominant paradigm for evaluation of empirical research findings in medicine and the social sciences despite concerns about frequent misinterpretations of those findings. Achievement of "statistical significance," the goal of NHST, often beckons unrealistic conclusions. Helpful would be the addition of a broader, Bayesian perspective of research in terms of progressive readjustment of hypothesis credibility from all sources of evidence. For this purpose, the Hypothesis Race Model (HRM) provides an intuitive Bayesian approach that builds upon NHST-concepts, helping to correct misunderstandings with minimal reeducation. The HRM is an extension of the Bayesian approach by Ioannidis in 2005 that helped to explain "why most published research findings are false." It is powerful enough to serve as the foundation for mathematical models to estimate and reduce the cost of empirical hypothesis testing.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

1
PLOS ONE
4510 papers in training set
Top 10%
18.3%
2
Entropy
20 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
10.1%
3
eLife
5422 papers in training set
Top 6%
10.1%
4
PLOS Biology
408 papers in training set
Top 0.2%
10.1%
5
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
51 papers in training set
Top 0.3%
8.4%
50% of probability mass above
6
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
61 papers in training set
Top 0.6%
4.3%
7
Research Synthesis Methods
20 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
4.0%
8
BMC Medical Research Methodology
43 papers in training set
Top 0.2%
3.7%
9
PeerJ
261 papers in training set
Top 3%
2.7%
10
PLOS Computational Biology
1633 papers in training set
Top 12%
2.6%
11
BioData Mining
15 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
2.6%
12
Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence
18 papers in training set
Top 0.2%
2.1%
13
Nature Human Behaviour
85 papers in training set
Top 2%
1.7%
14
F1000Research
79 papers in training set
Top 2%
1.7%
15
Statistics in Medicine
34 papers in training set
Top 0.2%
1.7%
16
Scientific Reports
3102 papers in training set
Top 63%
1.3%
17
Heliyon
146 papers in training set
Top 3%
1.2%
18
Royal Society Open Science
193 papers in training set
Top 3%
0.9%
19
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
28 papers in training set
Top 0.5%
0.9%
20
European Journal of Epidemiology
40 papers in training set
Top 0.7%
0.7%
21
Biometrics
22 papers in training set
Top 0.2%
0.7%
22
Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety
13 papers in training set
Top 0.5%
0.7%
23
Genetic Epidemiology
46 papers in training set
Top 0.9%
0.7%
24
Epidemiology
26 papers in training set
Top 0.6%
0.7%
25
Journal of The Royal Society Interface
189 papers in training set
Top 5%
0.7%