Research has quantified just how positive the scientific literature is: the meta-scientist Daniele Fanelli, in a 2010 study, searched through almost 2,500 papers from across all scientific disciplines, totting up how many reported a positive result for the first hypothesis they tested. Different fields of science had different positivity levels. The lowest rate, though still high, at 70.2 per cent, was space science; you may not be surprised to discover that the highest was psychology/psychiatry, with positive studies making up 91.5 per cent of publications.9 Reconciling this astounding
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