MENTAL MODEL · M6403

File Drawer Problem

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Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-07-30

CORE DEFINITION

Journals only like to publish successful studies with "significant differences" (P<0.05), while those "finding no difference" (failed experiments or confirming no association) are locked in drawers and never see the light of day. This leads to a scientific literature full of false positives.###

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

Success bias. Books on the market teach you "how to succeed" because no one publishes books on "how to fail." But this makes you mistakenly believe there is a formula for success. In reality, there may be 1000 people who used the same formula and failed (in the drawer), and you didn't see them.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

The File Drawer Problem is a type of existence combinatorial problem constructed around the pigeonhole principle, focusing on repetitions, coincidences, or structures that inevitably appear under a given allocation. It is a basic problem type in combinatorics and competition mathematics.

MINIMUM ACTION

In progress 0/1

Practice this model in one real situation:

Restate the problem as a correspondence between pigeons and drawers, choose an appropriate partition so that the conclusion emerges naturally. Use strengthened or multiple drawer versions to refine the argument.

Check to track your progress (stored locally)

Learning progress0%

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Source support: Explicit

link
zh.wikipedia.orghttps://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%99%BC%E8%A1%A8%E5%81%8F%E5%80%9AZH · Explicit
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