Negative results are decreasing in scholarly papers

One of the side effects of our fear of mistakes is the discrediting of negative findings. On the few occasions when I played craps in a casino, I noted how poorly the other players at the table reacted when I bet the "don't pass" line - essentially, betting on the dice roller to fail - when the outcome of a roll was perfectly random and the expected payout was no different whether you played pass or don't pass.

The craps example demonstrates how dysfunctional trying to deny the negative is. As Edison said, "[Negative results are] just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don't."

Given the above, reading the abstract of this 2012 paper was both unsurprising and somewhat discouraging. Entitled "Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries," by Daniele Fanelli and published in the March 2012 issue of Scientometrics, the paper indicates a significant increase of scholarly papers reporting that their study results supported the stated hypothesis, rather than disproving it:

This study analysed over 4,600 papers published in all disciplines between 1990 and 2007, measuring the frequency of papers that, having declared to have “tested” a hypothesis, reported a positive support for it. The overall frequency of positive supports has grown by over 22% between 1990 and 2007....

Fanelli notes some fascinating cultural differences in reporting negative findings, and included these wise words of warning:

A system that disfavours negative results not only distorts the scientific literature directly, but might also discourage high-risk projects and pressure scientists to fabricate and falsify their data.

Yes indeed.

[Hat tip @Mangan150]

See some prior posts on negative data in research: "Free the Dark Data in Failed Scientific Experiments," "Web site offers scientists access to lessons from failed experiments."