Yeah, it does seem like in general in science, we only see "we tried to do X and it didn't work" papers AFTER someone has published a paper that says "surprisin

Yeah, it does seem like in general in science, we only see "we tried to do X and it didn't work" papers AFTER someone has published a paper that says "surprisingly, we tried to do X which shouldn't work and it did!". The example that comes to mind is pluripotent stem cells (see e.g. discussion at http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050338 http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjo... ) where publications only really advance knowledge about the "dogma" of a field when someone finds a way to publish results that oppose it.