This is why I love the saying the plural of anecdotes is not data.
In other words,
1. In a popular area there’s more temptation to fiddle with the data or analysis until you get what you expect.
2. The more people who test an idea, the more likely someone is going to find data in support of it by chance.
The authors produce evidence of the two effects above in the context of papers written about protein interactions in yeast. They conclude that “The second effect is about 10 times larger than the first one.”
via Popular research areas produce more false results — The Endeavour.