CHRIS FREMANTLE

I don’t understand the detail of the science, but as highlighted in this piece, the increased tendency to publish failed experiments as a result of the growth in the number of open access journals is important.

As the author of the article says of the paper, ‘It is not destined to be highly-cited because, as the last line of the summary on page one makes clear, the results are negative: “in no case were specific protease–substrate interactions observed.” ‘  So not only were they not able to generate the interactions they had hoped to be able to generate, they also don’t expect the paper to be widely cited – acknowledging failure in this case opens up another form of failure.

On the importance of being negative | Science | The Guardian.