Granqvist, E. (2015). Why Science Needs to Publish Negative Results. https://www.elsevier.com/reviewers-update/story/innovation-in-publishing/why-science-needs-to-publish-negative-results.

“Publish or perish” is a commonly touted phrase within academic research. The main way in which scientists are able to gain funding, publicity, and prestige is through publishing impactful and important results in a journal. But this can be a very stressful path.

For a post-doctorate fellow, especially in the biological sciences, attempting to get a professorial position without a long list of impressive published papers to your name is virtually impossible, as I have seen firsthand. In one of my co-op positions at an academic research lab, I worked under an absolutely brilliant post-doctoral fellow. After several years of research in this particular lab, she was hoping to obtain a professor position and run her own lab at another university. However, this proved incredibly challenging, and I could tell that she constantly felt the pressure to publish novel research findings in high-impact journals. And novel findings usually do not come from experiments with negative results.

Failing to publish negative results is not only damaging for the individual, but for the scientific community at large. When a researcher simply keeps negative results to themselves, there is a possibility that other scientists who are working on a similar problem may attempt the same experiment. While duplication of experiments is also important (and frequently overlooked), this can ultimately be a waste of resources, as the question has already been answered. Instead of pursuing more promising avenues, researchers find themselves toiling over a hypothesis that has already been disproven, which does nothing to advance knowledge within the field. Furthermore, this high-stress culture can in turn make it more tempting to falsify results in order to make your research seem more “exciting”. Retraction Watch, a site that documents retracted papers (frequently retracted due to fraudulent results), is filled with stories of scientists that have doctored images or tinkered with raw data in order to make their research publishable. While the vast majority of scientists will not go to such extremes in order to obtain positive results, this phenomenon can be extremely problematic for the scientific community at large, fostering a community of mistrust and cutthroat competition rather than open collaboration.

However, the picture is not entirely bleak. In recent years, new journals have begun to spring up that specialize in publishing negative results, such as the Journal of Negative Results, New Negatives in Plant Science, and the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine. While these journals may not have an impact factor approaching that of Science or Nature, they still provide an outlet for this much-needed research, and are slowly working to dismantle the stigma surrounding “failed” experiments. This can be extremely beneficial for research as a whole, since it promotes a more open culture of science and prevents unnecessary experiments from being repeated. Furthermore, becoming more accepting of negative results could also help younger people who are considering a career in research. Instead of teaching trainees that negative results do not matter, we could adopt the mindset that any results are “good” results, as they . As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”