Recently it was suggested that I discount work performed by non-accredited investigators. That notion sidesteps the real issue which is: to scrutinize any and all work done in the name of advancing our understanding. 

As an example, here are excerpts from a paper which tries to uncover significance and non-significance in multiple studies.

> Several studies have identified chemicals produced by queens and other fertile females that apparently induce sterility in other colony members. However, other experiments produced nonsignificant results, leading some to argue either that earlier reports were mistaken, or that some queen pheromones only work in specific contexts.  

> It is difficult to ascertain the size of the difference or even to be confident that it is genuine, because almost all the honeybee  research was not conducted blind, unlike studies of the other species. Worryingly, nonblind studies reported substantially stronger effects than did blind studies. This result suggests that nonblind studies incurred various types of bias (e.g., observer bias) that exaggerated the effect.

Luke Holman, Behavioral Ecology (2018), 00(00), 1–11. doi:10.1093/beheco/ary023

¶

What this means, of course, is that we go in with the hopes of finding a particular result and tend to look for confirmation. Unless one prevents this by doing "blind testing" -- confirmation bias should be suspected.

Pete B

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