The value of negative results
The value of negative results
Giving all your data the credit they deserve, especially when they are negative, isn’t always an easy thing to do.
ALLEA Code:
According to the ALLEA Code all results, whether positive or and negative, are to be valued:
- Authors, research institutions, publishers, funders, and the research community acknowledge that negative results can be as relevant as positive findings for publication and dissemination.
- Researchers, research institutions, and organisations acknowledge data, metadata, protocols, code, software, and other research materials as legitimate and citable products of research.
In addition, ALLEA points to the responsibility of researchers, research institutions and organisations to acknowledge data as legitimate and citable products of research. Giving all your data the credit they deserve, isn’t always an easy thing to do.
For researchers
In most cases researchers start their research based on a hypothesis or theory. If for any reason, the results of the research don’t confirm or match the theory, this is often considered a ‘failure’, or at least a setback. In some cases, it might even be seen as a personal failure, as the person seems ‘unable to deliver’, or contain the fear of being associated with flawed or poorly designed research. However, it’s important to stress that negative results aren’t ‘bad’ results; they can be obtained through sound and rigorous work and they help us move forward in research. Simply because we can learn from them, we avoid unnecessary repeating of things that don’t work, leading to waste in time, money (e.g. public funds). Claiming the value of your negative results requires a positive mindset to convince those remaining sceptic or ignorant and it demands some creativity to ‘sell’ your story. Luckily, researchers can benefit from a general tendency in research towards upgrading negative research results.
Focusing solely on the positive results of research, not only impacts the results of the current and future research agenda in general. Researchers are no longer driven by curiosity or whatever direction findings of previous research leads them to, their interest is inspired by achievable goals with a secured success rate in order to score as fast and high impact as possible, where high impact doesn’t necessarily mean ‘of great value’.
Cartoon by Patrick Hochstenbach – Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license
For research leaders, supervisors
As young researchers enter the field, they are often focused on getting the ‘right’ results, achieving success but not so much on how to deal with negative results, or worse, failure. This aspect should be present in the professional guidance. Leading by example is key for all aspects of the supervisor role but in particular when it comes to negative results. Respecting their value, staying true to well-designed plans, thinking about ways to formulate and link negative results to meaningful stories should be part of that role.
For representatives of journals or any other kind of communication
The existence of a publication bias seems common knowledge in science. One form of bias is towards negative results, meaning that research with positive results, or results supporting the hypothesis, theory, or previously done research are far more common in journals. Many journals are not keen to publish a no-effect or nonexistence. As a result, authors often also prefer to focus on positive results and push negative results aside.
Because of the impact on science, there is a growing tendency towards respecting all research outcomes and upgrading the importance of negative results, with initiatives/journals such as Journals of Negative Results in Biomedicine, PLOS ONE, and The All Results Journals that encourage researchers to publish their negative results.
For funders
Even funders mainly reward researchers who can report on a ‘positive’ story. This may come from a well-meant conviction to keep investigating in what works. Negative results however move the field forward just as much.
Science is described as a constant process of knowledge accumulation where one researcher uses the results of another. Because of the bias concerning negative results, this accumulation primarily builds on positive results only and therefore collaboration is limited. The negative focus also implies that colleagues waste time and resources doing or finding what somebody else did (but didn’t report because of negative). Also, the fundamental part of doing research, looking critical towards what is ‘given’ and discussing, is lost. This too limits collaboration.
Take home messages
After module 3 reporting results, I:
- know where the responsibilities within the publication process lie
- understand the basics of data presentation, also within the different stakeholder roles
- know the basics of good image presentation
- know the criteria for authorship and authorship order
- apply good academic practices on authorship to the fullest
- know authorship contribution disclosure and apply it whenever possible
- know what author affiliation is and how to apply it
- made myself an ORCID
- know how to cite and reference in academic work, according to the reference style of my discipline
- stay up to date with the concepts of Open Science and how to apply them
- know I’m expected to self-archive my data in an open repository, depending on my discipline or research topic
- know I’m expected to publish open access, whenever possible, and I can choose the most suitable strategy
- know the concept of predatory publishers & conferences and and the tools that help recognize them
- know how to properly assess the quality of a publisher or conference
- know how to properly behave as a peer reviewer, acknowledge the importance of this role, and I invest to fill this role in an ethical way
- know the advantages of preprints and have analysed these for my own work