
Why we should love null results - DanBC
http://www.the100.ci/2017/06/01/why-we-should-love-null-results/
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tempodox
I've always wondered why people call it a “failed experiment” if it disproves
the hypothesis. Disproving the hypothesis is just as much an experiment's job
as proving it. Doing neither would be actual failure.

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rflrob
Experiments disproving the hypothesis are usually deeply unsettling, because
in most cases, we have a pretty good reason for having that hypothesis to
begin with---often lots of other experiments from the giants in your field.
Those really smart guys (and, unfortunately it is mostly guys and not gals)
are more impressive than you, J Random Gradstudent, so maybe you just screwed
up the experiment. And even if the ruling hypothesis is wrong, then that means
you're going to have to come up with a better one that fits both the old
experiments and your new one, which is probably going to be hard to do if you
want your new hypothesis to be simple and clear.

So a really clear rejection of the alternative hypothesis is great (which the
article advocates for), but most of the time it's the more ambiguous non-
rejection of the null (as you put it, actual failure), with a slim chance of
bashing the old guard with your probably janky new hypothesis that explains
it. They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed
at Bozo the Clown... and you don't want to be a Bozo.

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sverhagen
I'm an ESL speaker, but after some searching on the Internet, I've convinced
myself that "guys" is generally accepted as a mixed gender group.

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atomicfiredoll
> Those really smart guys (and, unfortunately it is mostly guys and not gals)

To be fair, I'm not sure why the original poster included the gender here
instead of saying "smart people." The gender thing is a bit off topic.

You are right that "guys" is often accepted ...at least as an informal second
person plural. I get the impression this is because English just doesn't have
a lot of great options here. Personally, I use "y'all." No matter the company
you keep (with the possible exception of a group of CEOs) it works and doesn't
make things awkward. That said, contractions like "Y'all'd've" start to get a
bit messy and I generally stay away from those ...especially when writing.

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afarrell
What's wrong with the second person plural subjunctive past perfect?

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tokai
Someone with enough social capital should found a journal dedicated to only
publishing null results. It could start out multi-disciplinary, and spilt up
if the publication load got too high.

Everyone could setup a digital journal on an afternoon, but it had to have the
blessing of people with reach in the scientific community to get anywhere.

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kerkeslager
It already exists for some fields, but these journals tend to be cited less,
which hurts their scores in impact analysis. The problem goes deeper even than
publication bias.

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knolan
A lot of academic research is no longer fundamental and is essentially r&D,
note the big D. Funding sources such as the EU commission are mostly
interested in funding what will have near term economic impact. So you've got
entire research institutions who have nicely kitted out clean rooms and all
kinds of cool toys doing just enough on each project to keep the funding
coming in.

As a result negative results will piss off project coordinators so who want
the next big thing they've been promised and research has just become complex
assembly projects between collaborators where researchers repeat what they
know works.

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zitterbewegung
In the current culture for Science we emphasize new or interesing discoveries
and publish or perish. Therefore writing up the null result is time consuming
and doesn't benefit the researcher . I think if we had a easy to use way to
collect null results and indexed them to other researchers it might make a
difference . To be honest this solution would also be a hard sell.

