3 ms·

You are talking about pressure, hate and pain when researching. So if I understand you correctly you say something like: "Research is hard. You try to discover

You are talking about pressure, hate and pain when researching. So if I understand you correctly you say something like: "Research is hard. You try to discover something new. You spent months on research and you still have not discovered something. This is part of the reason why some researches fake results." Right? Wouldn't that be 'solved' if we had well established research journals which accept papers of failed research? Because then you could at least publish what you tried and how/why it failed so that other researches can learn from what you did even though it did not turn out to produce new "positive" knowledge... Just did a quick google search - there is a journal out there for that: http://www.arjournals.com/ojs/ http://www.arjournals.com/ojs/ Maybe it is not prominent enough?

jonlucc 13y ago
I also doubt that a headline publication in that journal would do much for a future career in the field.
- LinaLauneBaer 13y ago
  Because of the type of Journal of because of the fact that nobody knows about it?
  - jonlucc 13y ago
    Well both, but I suspect that just as the need to be published in high impact journals is growing for PhDs and Post-docs, the need to be published with new discoveries is also growing. I think in biology (and particularly in pharma), competition for good thinkers is increasing. I think it is not uncommon to consider 8 or 10 candidates seriously for a position at that level. Maybe it would just put more pressure on the scientist to publish in a post-doc position.
gaiaseyes 13y ago
You've made a good point, and one that often arises in research. I've just finished my PhD in microbiology over the summer and am in a post-doc now. I cannot tell you the number of experiments I've done that yielded negative data (showing a hypothesis is false but not proving a counter hypothesis) that I could have avoided if other researchers had been able to publish their previous negative data. I've never heard of that journal. You have to be careful in scientific publishing. There are a lot of very good, respected journals and then there are ones like this that will accept essentially any paper, without peer review (sending the article out to a panel of other experts to determine the validity of the data). Where you publish, even if it is a low impact journal, is as important as what you publish. The other problem with publishing negative data is that there's already so many papers in a given field that its already extremely difficult for a researcher to read and keep up with them all. If you start adding negative data papers to that pile I think it would become utterly impossible to keep up with it.
- jonlucc 13y ago
  It may be impossible to keep up with much of the negative research, but it would save you time if you could look for very specific results. It might be that you would only keep up on the negative data for a very narrow pathway or from a small set of labs. Doing that kind of research could save a lot of time and money. Unfortunately, if those data are of such narrow use, there may be problems with publication. Firstly, no journal of negative data would ever gain any impact. Next, it might not be worth the time and effort to put together the paper. Maybe it would become sort of a right of passage for the newest student in a lab, which could have it's own benefits.
  - gaiaseyes 13y ago
    You've hit the nail on the head. The journal's impact factor would be pitifully low. But you're quite correct that having the information available would save a great deal of time and money (and blood, sweat, tears, grief and anxiety). The ability to publish negative results would be tremendously useful for doctoral students. I mean, a tremendous amount of science is negative results and nothing about dissertation research guarantees that your hypothesis will be proven by your data. This would ease a lot of the angst caused by publication requirements for doctoral students and would give them phenomenal writing practice on fairly low stress publications. There's merit here, without a doubt, but it doesn't fit in to the established hierarchy of academic research which is a massive issue. I'm a firm believer is reform of academic research, but that's an entirely different discussion...
    - sgt101 13y ago
      Perhaps a different standard of publication would be required. It should be very easy to create a negative result publication, but the real kudos should accrue to people who repeat a negative result that has great value to those who subsequently avoid the result if you see what I mean. So, initially "this is negative" then "are we really sure it's negative" followed by "it's really negative, we all agree, well done to us" or something like that.
mattlutze 13y ago
There is also one one of them. If their thesis is correct, that more than 60% of the experiments fail to produce results or expected discoveries, then there should be many, many of these journals constantly publishing negative results for each subfield in research. What's missing is a respect for the other half of "objectivity", that being an acceptance of the negative or null result. It's as important as positive results.

jonlucc 13y ago

I also doubt that a headline publication in that journal would do much for a future career in the field.

LinaLauneBaer 13y ago
Because of the type of Journal of because of the fact that nobody knows about it?
- jonlucc 13y ago
  Well both, but I suspect that just as the need to be published in high impact journals is growing for PhDs and Post-docs, the need to be published with new discoveries is also growing. I think in biology (and particularly in pharma), competition for good thinkers is increasing. I think it is not uncommon to consider 8 or 10 candidates seriously for a position at that level. Maybe it would just put more pressure on the scientist to publish in a post-doc position.

gaiaseyes 13y ago

You've made a good point, and one that often arises in research. I've just finished my PhD in microbiology over the summer and am in a post-doc now. I cannot tell you the number of experiments I've done that yielded negative data (showing a hypothesis is false but not proving a counter hypothesis) that I could have avoided if other researchers had been able to publish their previous negative data. I've never heard of that journal. You have to be careful in scientific publishing. There are a lot of very good, respected journals and then there are ones like this that will accept essentially any paper, without peer review (sending the article out to a panel of other experts to determine the validity of the data). Where you publish, even if it is a low impact journal, is as important as what you publish. The other problem with publishing negative data is that there's already so many papers in a given field that its already extremely difficult for a researcher to read and keep up with them all. If you start adding negative data papers to that pile I think it would become utterly impossible to keep up with it.

jonlucc 13y ago
It may be impossible to keep up with much of the negative research, but it would save you time if you could look for very specific results. It might be that you would only keep up on the negative data for a very narrow pathway or from a small set of labs. Doing that kind of research could save a lot of time and money. Unfortunately, if those data are of such narrow use, there may be problems with publication. Firstly, no journal of negative data would ever gain any impact. Next, it might not be worth the time and effort to put together the paper. Maybe it would become sort of a right of passage for the newest student in a lab, which could have it's own benefits.
- gaiaseyes 13y ago
  You've hit the nail on the head. The journal's impact factor would be pitifully low. But you're quite correct that having the information available would save a great deal of time and money (and blood, sweat, tears, grief and anxiety). The ability to publish negative results would be tremendously useful for doctoral students. I mean, a tremendous amount of science is negative results and nothing about dissertation research guarantees that your hypothesis will be proven by your data. This would ease a lot of the angst caused by publication requirements for doctoral students and would give them phenomenal writing practice on fairly low stress publications. There's merit here, without a doubt, but it doesn't fit in to the established hierarchy of academic research which is a massive issue. I'm a firm believer is reform of academic research, but that's an entirely different discussion...
  - sgt101 13y ago
    Perhaps a different standard of publication would be required. It should be very easy to create a negative result publication, but the real kudos should accrue to people who repeat a negative result that has great value to those who subsequently avoid the result if you see what I mean. So, initially "this is negative" then "are we really sure it's negative" followed by "it's really negative, we all agree, well done to us" or something like that.

mattlutze 13y ago

There is also one one of them. If their thesis is correct, that more than 60% of the experiments fail to produce results or expected discoveries, then there should be many, many of these journals constantly publishing negative results for each subfield in research. What's missing is a respect for the other half of "objectivity", that being an acceptance of the negative or null result. It's as important as positive results.