Why is it a bad thing if scientists only published studies with positive results?

It was so bizarre for researchers to think about actively submitting their negative results to a journal that was open to receiving them.

It's Monday, July 1st, and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm Cyfri producer D. Peter Schmidt.

On a show like this, we feature a lot of studies that have positive results.

Say you'll hypothesize that a honeybee will favor one flower over another, and your research backs that up, that's a positive result.

But what about the papers with negative results?

Researchers know that you're just as likely to disprove your hypothesis then validate it,

but there's not a lot of incentive to publish failed experiments, and some argue that this bias to only publish positive results hinders scientific progress.

And that's where the Journal of Trial and

error comes in. It's a scientific publication that only publishes papers with

negative or unexpected results. And the team behind it wants to change how the scientific community thinks about failure in order to make science better.

Here's guest host Anna Rothschild with more.

Dr. Saran Field editor-in-chief at the Journal of Trial and Error, an assistant professor in behavioral

and social sciences at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

So you're a researcher.

For those listening who aren't in science,

how much more likely is it that you end up with a negative

than a positive result at the end of your study.

Oh, honestly I would say about one in every two studies a negative.

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