While I agree that reports of failure can be important, in many cases experimental research is trying to develop a protocol to perform a measurement. A protocol

While I agree that reports of failure can be important, in many cases experimental research is trying to develop a protocol to perform a measurement. A protocol that does not work is simply not as interesting as a protocol that does work. For example, I am sure there are many plausible gene-editing protocols, but none are as robust as CRISPR. Of course the papers that describe CRISPR are going to be cited more, since that protocol is going to be used in many other studies.