Authors are also reviewers: problems in assigning cause for missing negative studies.

I COMPARE TWO POSSIBLE EXTREME HYPOTHESES REGARDING SUBMISSION OF PAPERS TO JOURNALS: the Q hypothesis, whereby the decision to submit is based on quality of research; and the P hypothesis, whereby it is based on probability of acceptance. I give five reasons as to why the P hypothesis is more plausible and suggest that problems of missing data may previously have caused researchers to misinterpret the evidence on editorial bias.