Exercise 3: Why Decoupling Publication From a "Positive" Result Caused the Real Drop From 96% to 44% — Possible Solution
=============================================================================================================================

Under the traditional publishing model, a study's chances of being
published depend heavily on getting a statistically significant,
"positive" result that supports the original hypothesis. This creates
a real, structural incentive at every stage of the research process:
researchers may unconsciously (or consciously) favor analysis choices
that produce significant results (p-hacking), and null or negative
results that don't support the hypothesis are far less likely to ever
be submitted or accepted in the first place (the "file drawer
problem").

The real 96% positive-result rate in standard psychology literature is
itself the signature of this incentive at work - real hypotheses,
tested honestly, simply shouldn't be confirmed correctly almost every
single time; a lot of genuine tests of a genuine hypothesis should fail
to find support even when the underlying theory has some real merit.

Registered Reports remove this incentive directly: because the
methodology is reviewed and provisionally accepted BEFORE data
collection or results exist, whether the study eventually gets a
positive or negative result has no bearing on whether it gets
published. Researchers have no structural reason left to chase a
significant result through flexible analysis choices, and null results
are no longer quietly discarded, since they're already guaranteed
publication regardless of outcome.

The real drop to 44% is close to what you'd actually expect from honest
hypothesis testing across many real questions - some hypotheses turn
out correct, many don't - which is exactly why the drop itself is
evidence the traditional 96% figure was inflated by the incentive
structure, not by genuinely superior hypotheses.

ANSWER: The traditional model's 96% figure reflects a real structural
incentive to produce and publish positive results (through p-hacking
and the file-drawer problem); because Registered Reports guarantee
publication before results exist, that incentive disappears entirely,
and the resulting 44% figure is much closer to what honest hypothesis
testing should actually produce.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
------------------------------
This explains the precise causal mechanism (incentive removal, not
simply "a different model") behind the measured drop, and correctly
identifies the original 96% figure itself as evidence of the problem
rather than a separate fact.