Professional dilettante ... and a proud member for 3 years 24 weeks

My Latest Post:

The Science of Negative Results

While on vacation in California, I was having a discussion with my wife (an atmospheric scientist), and a friend (an archaeologist). I am a Developmental Geneticist. So we were three scientists from three very disparate fields. I have been a scientist for 20 years. My wife for much shorter time and my friend for much, much longer. So we come at it from different chronological perspectives. And one thing we each have encountered is the huge lack in science of the reporting of negative results. There is a perception in science that one must prove your hypothesis correct or it is not worth reporting. So when someone posits a hypothesis and DISPROVES it (which is common and healthy in science) they cannot publish it until it can be paired with related positive data. That often doesn't happen for years and sometimes is never published if the work goes in a different direction. This, of course, leads to many people repeating the same negative data over and over because they are unaware that it has already been disproven already by many other researchers. This can be quite a waste of time and resources.