[vlovich123]

To anyone downvoting me, consider this HN article from not too long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27489927

The general premise with these studies is that if an effect size is real, then a preliminary study would show something interesting. To my knowledge, statistically that is a nonsense argument. Small sample sizes suffer from various small sample effects to the point that you can't predict either way (otherwise there wouldn't be a point in doing a larger study). To add insult to injury, all of these kinds of studies are only on local college students, which further invalidates any potential information gleamed from a preliminary study.

TLDR: The way science is done in the social sciences is fundamentally flawed & the fact that limited funding ensures that's the case doesn't excuse that a significant enough part of the body of knowledge isn't reliable.