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This is very relevant in biology. Countless Honours and MSc students every year try to achieve "results" and probably the majority of these may have as a first
by mikorym 7y ago
This is very relevant in biology. Countless Honours and MSc students every year try to achieve "results" and probably the majority of these may have as a first result a negative result, or if you will, the empty result.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
In fact, it is very useful. Any result that either proves nothing new or doesn't prove or disprove anything strengthens our confidence in the existing data knowledge base. This should even happen at school science fairs: If a student presents to me a study about how bicarbonate of soda does nothing to help plant x with growth, I would probably rate it highly as long as the content is consistent.
It sounds stupid to students, but "proving nothing" is not nothing. It is actually another grain of rice in the scale of how we approach topics that have not yet achieved clear results. And sometimes it's more than just a grain, it may be a confirmation of old results that if you had not redone the experiment yourself would remain an abstract or somewhat removed prospect.
- netcan 7y agoOne reason its such a problem is that many studies are observational, rather than experimental. There's a lot more room for ex post hypothesizing (first look at the data, then pose a hypothesis), which invalidates statistical confidence.
- inlined 7y agoThis reminds me of a story that I unfortunately forget the citation of: The military wanted to conduct an experiment to see if urban or rural recruits would have an easier time matriculating. They felt the hypothesis was obvious: rural recruits would be more “rugged” and handle extreme environments better. The experiment showed the opposite—urban recruits were matriculating better. Suddenly the conclusion was “obvious” as well: urban recruits were more accustomed to rigid lifestyles and could handle the orders barked at them. The lesson is that if two opposite results could be “obvious” then neither are. Observational studies can very easily fall into this trap.
- netcan 7y agoThat story is very close to something Karl Popper could have said. He would have called it pseudo-science.
- raxxorrax 7y agoAgreed and additionally people seem to hold their bachelor and master theses to vigorous standards. My bachelor thesis was better than my masters, but neither are worth anything. Not topically, not didactically, not scientifically. I hope nobody will ever read them again. I still got good grades. I was already employed while writing both and really didn't put my attention to it. I doubt you can reasonably expect these works to be anything more. At least not if the focus isn't an academic career with further degrees. Maybe learning to write something formal is worth it, but the results are expected to be disillusioning from a scientific standpoint. Or maybe it is the exceptions that are the goal here.
- newsoul2019 7y agoIf you ever find yourself in the presence of something novel that you need to report on, your prior training and experience will make your report or writeup more accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
- busyant 7y agoAgreed. One of my favorite papers for this very reason: "Self-electrophoresis is not the mechanism for motility in swimming cyanobacteria" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC177383/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC177383/
- duxup 7y agoIt's just like troubleshooting and debugging. The list of what didn't fix the problem or didn't change anything (or changed it only a little) .... can be the thing that points to what actually does. In that way non results are as important as anything else.