Despite recent attempts at improving research transparency, meta-analyses continue to demonstrate the pervasiveness of publication bias in the social sciences. In this project, we reveal a hitherto undiscovered yet enormously impactful source of such bias. More specifically, we demonstrate why the uncritical import of optimization algorithms from electrical engineering into social science research employing the configurational method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) has created publication bias on a large scale over the last quarter century. Drawing on replication material for 145 peer reviewed journal articles, we measure the extent this problem has assumed. We also present a solution that is guaranteed to eliminate this source of bias in future applications of QCA. More generally, our findings emphasize the importance of thoroughly evaluating the adequacy of foreign methods of data analysis before putting them to uses which they were not originally designed for.