The magic of meta-analysis

We as humans, tend to focus on negative news. In fact, there are whole industries that are geared around bad news (Pinker, 2018). In evolutionary terms this is because we needed to pay attention to the bad news e.g. where we had a high likelihood of being in danger (Simler & Hanson, 2018). Risk of harm was more important than possible benefit. We still hang onto this trait even though now it is not so useful for us (Simler & Hanson, 2018). Considering this we are going to address key arguments raised against meta-analysis, in the hope that by doing so we can let go of the ‘bad news’ and embrace the magic of the effect size.