Generally 90% of a researcher's efforts end in negative results. The remaining 10% of his/her results are positive and it is shared with the world in the form of publications or patents. Negative results are never projected. One of the drawbacks owing to this scenario is that the researchers throughout the world would be carrying out same experiments and getting same negative results. Scientific journals now a days seldom accept negative results. If we have a platform to share negative results, will it not save effort and money of a lot of researchers?
This link will guide you to the journal of negative results: http://www.jnrbm.com/about/edboard
The chief editor Bent Brachvogel was interviewed in the november issue of the "Lab Times" journal as well.
This link will guide you to the journal of negative results: http://www.jnrbm.com/about/edboard
The chief editor Bent Brachvogel was interviewed in the november issue of the "Lab Times" journal as well.
I guess calling a result negative is very relative term thus it is difficult to define.... it is same as freedom fighter for one side is terrorist to other... or flipping a coin give head a win doesn't mean a tail is evil...!!!! And above all those 90% of negative results are many time a fault in executing the experiment or some other flaw in designing the experiment, thus I don't think anyone can conclude a result as "true negative"....!!!
Naveen,
You bring up a very important point that has come up for discussion from time to time. These so-called 'negative' results are often very important, but often buried in someone's notebook never to be seen by a second person. There are platforms already in place, but could be improved upon, for these results.
The most important ingredient missing from making the reporting of 'negative' results successful is support from senior personnel. Like all things in academic science, changes need to be initiated from the top. Unfortunately, there is little incentive for senior scientists to promote something like this.
I am currently working on a new platform to help communicate all types of results. However, there seems to be little support (despite a lot of interest) from the basic sciences. I may start in basic medicine.
If there are scientists out there who are serious in sharing 'negative' results (of just interesting results that cannot be published as a complete story) in an efficient manner that requires little additional time commitment AND receive credit for it please contact me. This publication platform will not succeed without the support of the scientific community.
Naveen,
the topic is very important indeed and touches our habits of perception deeply. This is hard to change but it is important to try nonetheless. Especially, as we may not see the rapid progress of knowledge in all disciplines as we have experienced over the last decades.
Your question in itself points to the habit. Can results be negative by themselves? I do not agree, they can be inconclusive, not supporting the hypothesis, proving an approach to be unconveiable etc. but not negative in the sense of judgement whether they fit an desired outcome or not.
If we would be able to take this judgement (and sometimes vanity).
For one, the recognition of results without judging their pleasentry for the topic would take a lot of pressure out of the system which tempts to falsify. Qualitiy of work, planning and skill should be the grounds for judging performance not the additional luck needed to have positive outcomes. However, as science is carried out by humans and not by robots the competition and crave for the winner remain.
This is not a complete picture of the situation and not topic of my research but probably someone elses.
I support the general idea to free the publication of the pressure of "success stories", even though we are currently not really facing a lack of published results as is. Also, non-pleasing results can be published if wrapped up properly and receive interest. At least from my experience. However, the process of writing and publishing may be even more painful as the other way round.
I think researchers will be willing to give out negative results if they get some credit such as citation and recognition by their institutions for publishing negative results. Notwithstanding, it will be a plus for the scientific community for negative results and procedures that lead to their production to be made available to the community. Who knows? Negative results may become positive results for another researcher under different conditions.
In my opinion there is no "negative result". But there are and we have got a number of journals who publish those results and they are dedicated to publish such findings. You may find these journals interesting:
Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine (URL: http://www.jnrbm.com/)
Journal of Negative Results (URL: http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr)
Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results (URL: http://www.pnrjournal.com/)
However, I think all the journals should publish "negative results". Let me explain why:
Consider a researcher worked with the phytochemical aspects of a plant "A" and and reported that the methanolic extract (just take it as an example) has no antioxidant activities as he found in 5 different models. When another researcher will design a similar study it will help him to exclude this particular portion and will be able to design his study accordingly, say for example, for ethanolic extract or for the methods already been investigated by the previous author(s).
You may wish to read this article published in Nature (URL: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7339/full/471448e.html) and this one (URL: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33968/title/Opinion--Publish-Negative-Results/)
Negative results can sometimes be as informative as positive results. There should be journals that publish all findings.
There is. It is called "PLOS One". With no criteria for novelty, it is straight-forward to publish negative results there or in a host of other similar journals.
The problem is not really a lack of journals to publish negative results, it is a lack of time to write them up. People (rightly*) invest limiting time in writing up interesting results and tend to shelve more boring results (eg, negative or confirmatory results). Adding new journals doesn't help this - in fact it probably makes it worse because of all the extra reviewing workload.
As an aside, the best designed experiments are those where either result is interesting. Rather than spend your time on writing up the 90% negative results, perhaps spend your time in altering experimental design to bring that 90% figure down.
* rightly, in the fundamental sciences. Clinical trials are the exception, where all trials need to be published regardless of the outcome.
Although perhaps not as prestigious as some of the other links posted, I like the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (http://www.jasnh.com/)
Seeing all the comments for "need to share negative results" in my opinion it will be far easy if their is a way that the negative results can be published "anonymously".....!!!!! (nobody likes to glorify and accepts their short comings or failures.....) then I guess nobody will hesitate to publish it.... The TRUE authors can be given a pseudo name and identity and should be acknowledged or even referenced by the same pseudo name....!!!!! Once the negative result turns out to be "positive for some other dude" then the original authors of "negative results" can contact the person.... who has published the article and disclose their identity... and if chose not; then remain anonymous for life.....!!!! I guess the cost of publishing such "negative results" can be procured from those who has used these information and spin it off to a "positive result".... just a thought......!!!!! I hope this idea might click to someone who has time and resources to start an online journal and universal resource...!!!!
Why would you want to hide your name? There is nothing wrong with publishing negative results. It is far more important to have open disclosure of authors on all papers, unless you want to see drug companies submitting anonymous papers trashing their competitors drugs.
A totally agree with Mr Liston. I don't think it is a good idea to hide your name and perhaps every journal has its policy to disclose your name and affiliation properly, correctly whereas some journals even made it compulsory to mention the contribution of the authors in details; i.e. BioMed Central journals.
Have a look at this article: (URL:http://www.jnrbm.com/content/12/1/10). The authors reported that in their randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial, grass allergy immunotherapy tablet at a dose of 2800 bioequivalent allergen units was not associated with significant improvements in allergic rhinitis with or without conjunctivitis symptom or medication scores versus placebo over the grass pollen season.
This is an interesting finding and the results have certain implications in its respective field. So, why the authors should hide their name!!
found some good opinions..
It is very good to publish negative results because it can help the new researchers in no. of ways. In additions students with negative results should be encouraged and given moral boost, if looked down upon they may develop biased nature that is what is happening in the current world. Some people are publishing fudged results , literature has been polluted by manipulated works.
So yes definitely publish negative results it is very good and save the literature from pollution i.e., manipulation.
That is quite a big claim, that "most people" are publishing fudged and manipulated results. "Most people" are honest and publish valid data. Scientific fraud is exceedingly rare, and is probably being caught at much higher rates than ever in the past.
Let me explain what did I mean with the flaw in execution or planing an experiment and may be drawing all sorts of wrong conclusions can eventually make you with "foot in mouth disease" kind of problem and thus you better off being "anonymous".... One such situation can be explained by this result.... Some great scientist took a cockroach and took out one of its leg and asked it to "jump" and the roach did jump....!!!! so he/she kept on removing one leg after another and asked the same question "jump".... but finally after taking out all the limbs of the cockroach it "DID NOT JUMP".... even when yelled at to JUMP..... the conclusion drawn "If you remove all the legs from a cockroach.... it CAN NOT HEAR"..... how about that as a negative result.....!!!!!!????
Howdy folks,
A platform for dead end research strategies or experiments is interesting for sure. As has been made clear, without negative results or even better, results which originate from artifacts, science will make no progress. In my PhD I could make progress only by throwing away the results of one year of research (and immediately thereafter drinking a bottle of burbly bourbon) after I could prove that my results were affected by an artifact originating from my measuring method (for ethylene production by plants).
After I could describe the artifact experimentally (not published, but presented to my PhD promoter) I could steam full ahead to produce results in photobiology and ethylene physiology which were at that time brand-new in plant physiology and a break through in the understanding of ethylene physiology.
Maybe I should have published a description of the artifact, but which journal would be interested in publishing a methodological artifact in analytical chemistry?
Hence a platform or maybe even a genuine International Journal for Methodological Artifacts (IJMA) would be an interesting initiative.
Question is, which publishing house will ever give the kick-off for such a journal? It requires a somewhat different mindset to publish this type of results for sure. But it would allow locusts off scientists to learn not to make the same errors as their peers or/and to recognize artifacts discovered (and described) by their peers. And just to be pretty clear about artifcacts. They have to be reproducible as well! and that's exactly how I proved that I had artifacts in my first results, e.g. by being able to reproduce the artifacts.
Cheers,
Frank
In my opinion journals dedicated mainly to negative results do not solve the problem. As Hasan Rajabi wrote calling result negative is debatable so the same will be creating special journals for them - even if hypotheses turned out to be false it is still some result, sometimes it is even more helpful because indicates that this direction is wrong and something different need to be done.
I think there are some databases which are not publishing studies that did not work per se but all research that are carried out in specific region/country/continent or even worlwide. By using these in your studies you can find out which research were not published and then contact which authors to find out the reason - in order to avoid the same faults or ideas which lead to nothing.
In some countries such registries are required but it probably applies only to clinical trials. There is also campaign concerning this problem - "All Trials Registered | All Results Reported":
http://www.alltrials.net/
Allow me to add my perspective. Negative results are often observed in epidemiological studies and are published in respectable journals. Many times such result will contradict previous studies, then there is the randomized clinical trial that will result in no effect as opposed to the results of previous observational studies (case- control, cohort). It was the case with many microelements that were believed to have preventive effects on cancer, while RCTs did not demonstrate such effects.
There is nothing wrong with publishing negative result provided the study is of high standards.
Not all "negative results" are negative. Often a result indicating that a function, channel, pathway, etc does not lead to improved results or an alternative outcome from that expected is actually a positive outcome. To know that what you have researched is not worth further investigation can totally change research directions all over the world. Often the issue is in the way the publication is written, with an emphasis on "this failed and, therefore, is no good". How it should be written is "this direction of research could not reject the (null hypothesis) and, therefore, no further research in this direction is warranted"
Dear Naveen,
I don't know about a platform sharing experimental data or so such as array data, but your topic is in tight connection with the question asked by Alessandro Diana (see https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_far_are_scientists_willing_to_go_to_publish_their_rejected_articles_or_scientific_reviews).
His initiative is quite interesting.
Regards,
Sébastien
@Sebastien, You are right! Good obsevation! Would be nice to merge this two threads! What do You think about!
Naveen very interesting question. But as many of the researchers asked, maybe what is negative for some turns out to be positive for others.
What about incomplete researches left by researchers mid-way. Shouldnt they be put up somewhere for someone else to complete?
results are simply results. positive and negative are the attributes which we attach with them so I think each and every research work should get be published so that the world may know about itself.
Even negative results, if known, may narrow or re-direct further studies and save the money.
One positive result may not be enough: some scientific problems may have more than one solution, we should look for the optimal one.
If one is trying to produce a replacement theory, it's incredibly valuable to know which experiments "don't work properly" under the current system.
However, if those experiments are regarded as "failures", and aren't published, then this information isn't available. We can't then easily tell by looking at the published peer-reviewed literature where our current theories might be having problems, and we also can't easily judge how widespread or how serious those problems might be.
Link comes from another thread, and I thought it might be related to this topic, but no, silly!
http://universalrejection.org/#instructions
Yes ! Most of the time due to lack of information, lot of effort and time of a researcher is wasted in trying out methodologies that did not work in past.
Such platforms already exist (see http://www.jnr-eeb.org/index.php/jnr). I think that scientists are simply not aware of it...
Not just 'negative' results, but methodologies that failed/don't work, would be useful.
Well I think some of the results you call as negative results are already published. However that results are mixed with others that raised important questions or were the first step in "positive/publishable" results. Even though I understand what you mean and I agree that results that are simply taken from the best presentation of a paper could also be presented and surely would be useful for future research. Thank you for raising this issue!
Such a platform do exist in my opinion. It is Figshare.com page. Not only you can publish negative results here, but you also get a DOI number, so all the results are citable. Figshare is also indexed by Google Scholar and ImpactStory, so it may be very useful for all.
if anyone is interested, an excellent TED talk by Ben Goldacre, sharing his concerns (and disturbing numbers) about the percentage of unpubliched clinical trial studies (that had so called negative results). enjoy!
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_what_doctors_don_t_know_about_the_drugs_they_prescribe.html
Just to add (more confusing) this with another
(started earlier: Jul 24, 2012 · Modified Feb 6, 2013 by the author) thread in ResearchGate on the matter:
https://www.researchgate.net/topic/Bioinformatics_and_Computational_Biology/post/How_about_establishing_a_database_for_failing_experiments.
It might be that the latter thread has been closed (or get's minor attention) now.
Best regards,
Wolfgang
good point. I saw some researchers mentioned their negative results in the reslts and discussion sections, however no data was shown in the paper due to space limit. It will be great if the journal and/or the authors establish a forum to share those so-called negative data. I believe the community will benefit a lot from those data.
In the area of research "what not to do" is as important as "what to do". Because it would prevent the loss of time, money and resource in futile efforts/experiments. In addition to the negative results the proper reporting of genesis and experimental approaches that failed is also important. ResearcgGate provide platform to share such negative finding in the benefit of researchers. Also , the link suggested by Jan Niklaswill and Suzie can also be followed.
In my opinion there should be such platform, but probably trying to find the answer " Why and how it didn't happen positively? "
Why scientists must share their failures?
" Indeed, people in nearly any occupation, from painters to journalists to architects could learn from failed iterations of the respective masters of their crafts. Yet in all these fields, we don’t expect—nor do we get—any of this. We generally only see the final, perfected product.
In the sciences, however, I want to shift this thinking. I want researchers to share everything from start to finish. Why? Because we need them to. Their failures, if seen, could stop another researcher from making the same mistakes. What’s more, knowing what doesn’t work will help researchers—or computers, in the future—deduce what might work, and in turn, speed up scientific progress.
This scientific progress is critical if we are going to tackle global challenges; preventing pandemics and finding sustainable energy sources that will fuel growing societies. However, if other fields are any indication, getting to a point where sharing failed scientific results is commonplace will be hard and take time. It will be worth it though, because the benefits are immense.
From my experience, 99 percent of work in research never makes it into the final, published article. Yet, in the past, that article was all we’d see. Not only does this give the public a distorted view of the scientific process, but it also slows progress for other researchers..."
https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/why-scientists-must-share-their-failures
I perfectly agree with your proposition. Of course, if there is a database that keeps track of all negative results, it will save researchers the hustle of walking the same trailed path, wasting precious time and resources.
Negative data/results constitute a large majority of scientific information. Being remain unpublished/unshared or loss of these findings to the wider community leads to the needless repetition of time-consuming experiments thereby wasting time and money on repeating failed experiments. Therefore, such results should also be published or shared widely.
A new platform allows researchers to publish and share all outputs from their research. See the link: -
https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/new-way-researchers-share-their-outputs
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