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...move that could be a boon for biomedical scientists everywhere, a Harvard Medical School professor has started the “Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine” (JNRBM) which is dedicated to publishing the results that could save scientists from doing years of work just to get the same negative result that others have already found. In an introductory editorial, Hersey Professor of Cell Biology Bjorn R. Olsen, who edits the journal, and Visiting Research Fellow in Pediatrics Christian Pfeffer wrote that “it is useful and important to publish well documented failures, such as with...
Indeed, the small number of scientists willing to publish negative results may be a function of self-interest. For example, the Journal of Universal Computer Science started a section for negative results in 1997. Since then, the journal has received no submissions on negative results, leading one editorial board member to quip that the only known negative result was the failure of the section itself. Owning up to a failed hypothesis is something few scientists would be willing to do unless their peers are doing so as well. After all, admitting to getting something wrong does little to help...
Likewise, Olsen’s JNRBM itself has had only a handful of submissions since it was launched last fall. In their introductory editorial, Olsen and Pfeffer address some of the most important reasons why scientists may be wary of publishing negative results. The first reason is that it could give crucial information to competitors who may be able to use those negative results to beat everyone else to an important positive result. This problem is magnified for scientists who are the first to publish negative results. Those researchers benefit very little from the sparse numbers of negative results published...
Nevertheless, the resistance to publishing negative results in scientific journals speaks to larger issues about the culture of science. That problem is the widespread belief that publication of big results in a handful of prestigious journals is the primary goal of scientists. In a commentary in the journal Nature last month, a prominent editor of scientific journals wrote about how the obsession to publish in the top journals such as Nature, Science or Cell has sometimes eroded the quality of work produced. The narrow self-interest that pushes scientists to focus on a handful of prestigious journals also prevents them...
...Lampoon, the semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, seems still to display its perennial problems. A lack of leadership, a homogenous membership and a culturally ingrained opposition to publishing anything that provokes even the subtlest chuckle all continue to plague the would-be jokesters. Humbly, I propose a few policy changes at the Bow Street castle...