Percy writes:
It is often lamented that we don't see enough papers reporting negative results, that the results of such efforts often wind up in file drawers instead of journals. I think the criticism is a bit too strong, as any negative results must be kind of compelling for a journal to accept a paper reporting it.
It seems to me that the predicament of sick people who volunteer for medical research is the truly lamentable aspect of the non-publication of negative findings in medical studies.
Those who care most are likely the desperately sick people who were, say, in a drug-receiving cohort in a study that unknowingly repeated previous studies: they never had a chance of any benefit, and if negative results were centrally reported, they could have participated in a study with at least some possibility of benefit.
In addition, patients are frequently refused participation in one study expressly because of their prior participation in another. So the patients at hand risked untoward events without any real chance of benefit in the unnecessary study, and forfeited any chance of participating in another.
The rest of us, of course, also suffer negative impacts: from the waste of funding, public and private, and from opportunities lost when unnecessary, redundant studies crowd out genuinely new work.
The reaction at most journals would be, "Here's a paper reporting yet another failed effort to fuzbat the wizsteins of norburs. Who cares. Rejected!"
Let's rephrase your spoof quote: "Here's a paper reporting yet another failed effort to treat pancreatic cancer with extremely toxic norburitine. Who cares. Rejected!"
Oncologists, of course, generally do report both positive and negative results to central databases, but many fields of medicine and most branches of science do not. That's pretty stupidly wasteful of time, lives, and money.
I can't see anything good about that, or any good reason to refrain from changing it.
The competition for journal space is well and good, but negative results
are important and should be reported: a winner-take-all perspective is as pernicious in research as it is in economies.
Note that in the field of archeology, another field that depends on peer-reviewed journals, both funding and access to sites are being withdrawn when publication lags, whether that be in a journal, private press, database, website, etc. Not being a winner in the journal joust is no excuse for not publishing results.
Real things always push back.-William James
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