Highlight negative results to improve science

By Devang Mehta, via Nature.

Data from a 2012 study of more than 4,000 published papers show that scientific literature as a whole is trending towards more positivity. The study’s author, Daniele Fanelli, found that the frequency at which papers testing a hypothesis returned a positive conclusion increased by more than 22% from 1990 to 2007. By 2007, more than 85% of published studies claimed to have produced positive results. Fanelli concluded that scientific objectivity in published papers is declining.

When negative results aren’t published in high-impact journals, other scientists can’t learn from them and end up repeating failed experiments, leading to a waste of public funds and a delay in genuine progress. At the same time, young scientists like me are bombarded with stories only of scientific success, at conferences and in journals, leading to an exacerbation of ‘imposter syndrome’ when our own work doesn’t match these expectations.

The pressure to publish a positive story can also lead scientists to spin their results in a better light, and, in extreme instances, to commit fraud and manipulate data. In fields such as biotechnology and genomics, social scientists have already pointed out that hyping up the science could foster unrealistic expectations in an already sceptical public, counter-intuitively leading to greater distrust when real-world advances come at a slower pace.

The problem is worsened by funding agencies that reward only those researchers who publish positive results, when, in my view, it’s the scientists who report negative results who are more likely to move a field forward.

We need reviewers and publishers to commit to publishing negative results in their journals. We need academic conferences to embrace honest discussions of failed experiments. We need funding agencies to support scientists who produce sound negative results. And, as scientists, we must acknowledge that all important work should be recognized, irrespective of its outcome.


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