Audio long read: So you got a null result. Will anyone publish it?

• NATURE PODCAST
• 30 August 2024

All too often negative results fail to appear in scientific literature, but now funders, publishers and researchers are finding ways to change this.

By
• Benjamin Thompson

1. Max Kozlov
2. Benjamin Thompson

2024-08-30-podcast-long-read-null-result-download

The 'file-drawer problem', where findings with null or negative results gather dust and are left unpublished, is well known in science. There has been an overriding perception that studies with positive or significant findings are more important, but this bias can have real-world implications, skewing perceptions of drug efficacies, for example.

Multiple efforts to get negative results published have been put forward or attempted, with some researchers saying that the incentive structures in academia, and the ‘publish or perish’ culture, need to be overturned in order to end this bias.

This is an audio version of our Feature: So you got a null result. Will anyone publish it?

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