Negative results-2

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Dear friends,

Here is a quote on negative results taken from an article: Negative results

Mar Ecol Prog Ser 191: 301–309, 1999 by Browman

‘The importance of negative results—nature’s apparent silence or nonacquiescence to our expectations—is also a major concern in science. Of course, scientists acknowledge the vitality of a negative outcome and often try to generate such a result

actively—as in trying to disprove a colleague’s favored hypothesis. But the prevalence of negative results does pose an enormous, and largely unaddressed, problem in the reporting of scientific information.’ Positive results tell more interesting stories than negative results and are, therefore, easier to write about and more interesting to

read (a privileging of the positive).'

He contends that this may lead to a bias which acts against the propagation of negative results in the scholarly literature. This has been borne out in recent surveys of the medical literature which discuss ‘publication bias’: studies showing positive results from drugs are published faster and more often than studies showing neutral or negative results, producing a bias that shows drugs in a favourable light.

Anupama