4 ms·
I wonder if this is a dogmatic pressure or a financial pressure? Second could probably be solved by increasing public funding but not sure about how one would a
by egeozcan 11y ago
I wonder if this is a dogmatic pressure or a financial pressure? Second could probably be solved by increasing public funding but not sure about how one would approach the first.
- adrianN 11y agoThere are a billion things about which you could publish a negative result, and it's hard to judge whether a negative result is particularly interesting. On the other hand, positive results are fewer and thus a priori more interesting than negative results. They also stimulate follow-up research much more than a negative result. Since journals want to publish interesting articles more than boring ones, and articles that are likely to be cited more often than articles without follow-up results, there is a bias against accepting negative results. As scientists are judged by the number of things they get published, and the number of citations their papers get, they have every incentive to only publish positive results.