Actually it's not a real question - rather a desire to share interesting finding: I came across an interesting journal: "Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine". From the aims&scope: "Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal that promotes a discussion of unexpected, controversial, provocative and/or negative results in the context of current tenets." I find an idea of this journal very needed. With current pressure to publish its good to know that even in case of disappointing results there is a space to share the findings and conclude with something positive (a paper in peer-reviewed journal).
Pawel,
A good question. Personally, it hasn't happened to me (I bet everyone says that - hey!!) - but I know colleagues that have - and i have certainly cited 'negative' studies. it is a good idea I think as well - although I'm not sure about a whole journal devoted to 'negative' studies - as that might put people off ever accessing them. The thing is that, unless the methodology and design used is 'completely inappropriate and off-track' (and no-one should publish those), there should be at least a few positives to report as well. Of course, the main benefit to the research community in publishing negative results is that it allows others to 'steer away' from making the same mistakes (i.e. we thought that we were on the right track but must have been 'barking up the wrong tree) and/or highlights how to go about a similar topic study - but in a different fashion.
Hi
Once it happened to me. I should say I didn't abandon the study but changed my course of work according to the results obtained. I was working on anticancer activity. During in vivo studies, I got a feeble response in EAC models and hence didn't proceed further for solid tumor studies. But as it was having some effect, I did mechanistic studies and then found out the way it was acting on the cancerous cells.
I think in most of the cases, people will plan their studies according to the results they get during the studies and as far as research is concerned, this should be the outlook towards it. I don't say that negative results are bad, but if you get negative results, it is always advisable to find the reason for the negativity and take it on a positive note and proceed further.
Regards
@Dean,
Totally agree. Also I would add: having space to publish and recognition of work resulting in negative findings makes publishing/research less "smartness contest" and gives more incentive to explore less popular and trendy research directions.
@Alok,
Finding a reason for negative results and continuing from there is of course proper approach. But if someone performed solid research I think it should be published irrespective of positive/negative finding - even as Dean said, to warn others about potential problems with given research direction/approach.
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