Consider this case, a research scholar spend two year (Just example) to construct some experiment setup by expecting that it will give improvement in the performance compared to system available. Unfortunately after two year, after conducting experiments he realized that in fact it decreased the performance of the system.
Can we consider these results to be contribution to the scientific community?
I want to quote one of answers from a discussion "What is your vision of the failure of the researcher for the first time in his research experience Do you mean stop or what?" https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_vision_of_the_failure_of_the_researcher_for_the_first_time_in_his_research_experience_Do_you_mean_stop_or_what which in my opinion is very relevant to this topic:
"The researcher should expect to fail several times before finding success. As an inventor, Thomas Edison made 10,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 10,000 times?" he famously answered, "I have not failed; I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work." Of course, Edison eventually succeeded and changed history".
Thus, your "negative results in research" will give to you good understanding about you discovered incorrect ways in order to resolve your problem correctly.
What to do if we get negative results in research?
In your research report especially on the discussion section, you need to address why negative results were yielded instead of hypothesized / expected positive results. You might need to perform further literature review, re-examine your research method & data again or discuss with other Subject Matter Experts (SME) to explain why. Beside acknowledging the research limitations, you need to prepare as other research stakeholders might ask you - what are you going to do differently if you are given another opportunity to re-do the research again.
Can we consider these results to be contribution to the scientific community?
From my personal experience, it depends on who are the research stakeholders & their expectations as some expect positive results as their KPIs, some prefer more positive results & less negative result(s), and some recognize the negative results as knowledge contribution regardless whether it is one inch short (negative results) or one mile long (positive results). The important thing to do is to document all the research process, negative result findings, explanation on possible reasons why not getting the positive results after further literature review & discussions with SME. Some publishers / journals are willing to publish such findings. More importantly you shouldn't give up & continue the research because you don't know how close you are in getting the positive results. As what Thomas Edison said "I have not failed 700 times, I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work". You need passion & perseverance to fuel this journey to the end. Wishing you all the best.
I had an experience like that. I mean, in my Masters my results were negative, because they denied my original hypothesis. Specifically speaking, my hypothesis was that the kinin b2 receptor would acting as a protector factor in the kidneys in the glycerol-induced acute kidney injury model, but as I saw the opposite occurred because animals which have not this receptor showed a mild form of damage compared with wild-type animals. Anyway, in cases like that it is important for the science also, because they show to the scientists what ideas that does not have evidences which support them, and at minimum saves work for others. It is important to try publishing these negative results also, as I did. It is difficult, but it is important.
We let the world know the inappropriate methodologies that does not work with such studies we conducted so that other researchers would not waste resources pursuing the same fruitless journey!
It's called 're-search', meaning you search over and over again until you find what you are looking for. Part of it is finding what does not work (which I believe should be recorded as well...limited results). I do not know of any researcher who haven't recorded negative results, we all do, we just conceal it and only report the positives (which we did not find at the first go!). In my view, if you find positive results first time around, it was most likely a 'search' not 're-search' and chances are the work does not have much originality.
Yes, of course. All researches need not explore the findings in the positive direction; just they need to be conducted precisely.
I think that negative results may be also published. Some negative results are so interesting.
Dear S. Harikrishnan
In our field (computer engineering), sometimes negative results are valuable as positive results. We need this to show the drawback of our algorithm or model to open future research points for others for more improvements.
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