The importance of negative studies

The paper by Wang is somewhat unusual because it essentially reports a negative conclusion. Judging by the number of internet blogs on the topic, it seems there is genuine concern about the inability to publish negative results, and there is now quantitative evidence to suggest that there is a growing trend for journals to publish studies with positive outcomes.2 ,3 There may be many reasons for this bias, including increased competition for research funding and pressure on scientists who are evaluated by the number of publications and their citations combined with the fact that positive studies receive more citations than negative studies. Whether this is a healthy trend or is undermining science is an important debate, and there is a movement by open access journals to redress the bias. Interestingly, Wang and colleagues have, either deliberately or subconsciously, written the title of their paper in the affirmative to give their study the appearance of a positive outcome.

Why are negative studies of value to the community? Many of us were trained as scientists according to the principles of falsifiability as described by Popper. His famous ‘black swan’ example is one we are probably all very familiar with. Science philosophy has moved on from Popper and most laboratory scientists realise that interpreting negative data is never quite as black …