Publishing Negative Results

Elena: Journals should be obliged to publish well-designed studies even when the results are negative. In my lab we spent a year replicating an effect that turned out not to exist, and we later found two other groups had quietly found the same.

Kofi: I agree there's a problem, but forcing journals to publish everything would bury readers. There's already too much to read, and a flood of null results would make the important findings harder to find.

Hiro: I'd approach it differently. If researchers registered their study design before collecting data, journals could accept the paper in advance, regardless of outcome, which removes the incentive to hide failures.

Elena: Registered reports are good, but they're slow to spread. Most senior researchers in my field have never submitted one, and hiring committees still count flashy results.

Kofi: That's the real issue, isn't it. Change what universities reward, and the publication pattern follows. Making journals the villain misses where the pressure comes from.

Hiro: Kofi has a point about incentives, but journals and funders can move faster than hiring culture. If funders required results to be posted in a public database, journals wouldn't need to publish everything.

Elena: A database I could accept as the minimum. It wouldn't give credit the way a paper does, but at least nobody would waste another year chasing a ghost.