http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2006-02-23/#5
What Critics Don't Write About Speaks Louder Than Words, Says Study
A Duke University study has concluded that many movie critics, faced with a huge number of films that that they are required to watch, often avoid writing reviews of the bad films they've seen while others avoid writing reviews of good films if other critics have already given them "thumbs up" notices. "Our model demonstrates that the fact that an expert is silent about a product may imply a positive or a negative review, depending on the expert," the study said. The study appraised the work of 46 critics and what they had to say -- or didn't have to say -- about 466 movies. One of the researchers, Peter Boatwright, said later that he and his colleagues did not take into account the fact that many critics mentioned in their study have little say about the selection process, since they are assigned movies to review by their editors, and that in the case of many major newspapers, a lead critic is expected to review the films that attract the greatest pre-release publicity.
I have wondered why it doesn't seem as though Roger Ebert and other leading critics write really bad reviews, and this seems like a plausible explanation. Out of curiousity, I looked up the reviews for one of the worst movies I could think of ("Eye of the Beholder") -- the list of reviews on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes had fewer recognizable names than normal.
