{"id":4187,"date":"2019-10-06T19:35:23","date_gmt":"2019-10-06T10:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/163.180.4.222\/lab\/?p=4187"},"modified":"2019-10-06T19:35:23","modified_gmt":"2019-10-06T10:35:23","slug":"highlight-negative-results-to-improve-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?p=4187","title":{"rendered":"Highlight negative results to improve science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h5>Publishers, reviewers and other members of the scientific community must fight science\u2019s preference for positive results \u2014 for the benefit of all, says Devang Mehta.<\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"article__body serif cleared\">\n<figure class=\"figure\">\n<div class=\"embed intensity--high\">\n<div class=\"embed intensity--high\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" src=\"https:\/\/media.nature.com\/w800\/magazine-assets\/d41586-019-02960-3\/d41586-019-02960-3_17216276.jpg\" alt=\"Arrow bounce back illustration\" data-src=\"\/\/media.nature.com\/w800\/magazine-assets\/d41586-019-02960-3\/d41586-019-02960-3_17216276.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption>\n<p class=\"figure__caption sans-serif\">Credit: Adapted from sorbetto\/Getty<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Near the end of April, my colleagues and I published an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/genomebiology.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s13059-019-1678-3\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/genomebiology.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s13059-019-1678-3\" data-track-category=\"body text link\">unusual scientific paper<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 one reporting a failed experiment \u2014 in\u00a0<i>Genome Biology<\/i>. Publishing my work in a well-regarded peer-reviewed journal should\u2019ve been a joyous, celebratory event for a newly minted PhD holder like me. Instead, trying to navigate through three other journals and countless revisions before finding it a home at\u00a0<i>Genome Biology<\/i>\u00a0has revealed to me one of the worst aspects of science today: its toxic definitions of \u2018success\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Our work started as an attempt to use the much-hyped CRISPR gene-editing tool to make cassava (<i>Manihot esculenta<\/i>) resistant to an incredibly damaging viral disease, cassava mosaic disease. (Cassava is a tropical root crop that is a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-019-00014-2\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-019-00014-2\" data-track-category=\"body text link\">staple food<\/a>\u00a0for almost\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/a-cassava-revolution-could-feed-the-worlds-hungry\/\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/a-cassava-revolution-could-feed-the-worlds-hungry\/\" data-track-category=\"body text link\">one billion people<\/a>.) However, despite\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nplants2015146\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nplants2015146\" data-track-category=\"body text link\">previous reports<\/a>\u00a0that CRISPR could provide viral immunity to plants by disrupting viral DNA, our experiments consistently showed the opposite result.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"recommended pull pull--left sans-serif\" data-label=\"Related\"><\/aside>\n<p>In fact, our paper also showed that using CRISPR as an \u2018immune system\u2019 in plants probably led to the evolution of viruses that were more resistant to CRISPR. And although this result was scientifically interesting, it wasn\u2019t the \u2018positive\u2019 result that applied scientists like me are taught to value. I had set off on my PhD trying to engineer plants to be resistant to viral diseases, and instead, four years later, I had good news for only the virus.<\/p>\n<p>Every peer reviewer agreed that our study was methodologically sound, but it soon became apparent that the finding was a message no one wanted to share. Why was it so hard for reviewers and editors to publish a single report showing a limited failure of CRISPR technology?<\/p>\n<p>Scientists have become so accustomed to celebrating only success that we\u2019ve forgotten that most technological advances stem from failure. We all want to see our work saving lives or solving world hunger, and I think the collective bias towards finding positive results in the face of failure is a dangerous motivation. Additionally, in fields such as genetic engineering, antiscience activists are always ready to declaim any hint of failure as an indictment of the field as a whole. My work, when published, was dutifully misrepresented by some who were eager to damage the reputation of gene engineering.<\/p>\n<p>And even if my research was flawed, the problem remains that the scientific world largely ignores negative results. Data from a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11192-011-0494-7\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s11192-011-0494-7\" data-track-category=\"body text link\">2012 study<\/a>\u00a0of more than 4,000 published papers show that scientific literature as a whole is trending towards more positivity. The study\u2019s author, Daniele Fanelli, found that the frequency at which papers testing a hypothesis returned a positive conclusion increased by more than 22% from 1990 to 2007. By 2007, more than 85% of published studies claimed to have produced positive results. Fanelli concluded that scientific objectivity in published papers is declining.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"recommended pull pull--left sans-serif\" data-label=\"Related\"><\/aside>\n<p>When negative results aren\u2019t published in high-impact journals, other scientists can\u2019t learn from them and end up repeating failed experiments, leading to a waste of public funds and a delay in genuine progress. My study did not solve the scourge of viral disease in cassava, but it did show researchers where not to look for a solution, and that\u2019s important for real progress. At the same time, young scientists like me are bombarded with stories only of scientific success, at conferences and in journals, leading to an exacerbation of \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/Impostor-Syndrome-Is\/238418\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/Impostor-Syndrome-Is\/238418\" data-track-category=\"body text link\">imposter syndrome<\/a>\u2019 when our own work doesn\u2019t match these expectations.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/hype-impact-factor-bad-science\/\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/hype-impact-factor-bad-science\/\" data-track-category=\"body text link\">The pressure to publish<\/a>\u00a0a positive story can also lead scientists to spin their results in a better light, and, in extreme instances, to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeednews.com\/article\/stephaniemlee\/brian-wansink-cornell-p-hacking\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeednews.com\/article\/stephaniemlee\/brian-wansink-cornell-p-hacking\" data-track-category=\"body text link\">commit fraud and manipulate data<\/a>. In fields such as biotechnology and genomics, social scientists\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3954634\/\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3954634\/\" data-track-category=\"body text link\">have already pointed out<\/a>\u00a0that hyping up the science could foster unrealistic expectations in an already sceptical public, counter-intuitively leading to greater distrust when real-world advances come at a slower pace.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is worsened by funding agencies that reward only those researchers who publish positive results, when, in my view, it\u2019s the scientists who report negative results who are more likely to move a field forward.<\/p>\n<p>We need reviewers and publishers to commit to publishing negative results in their journals. We need academic conferences to embrace honest discussions of failed experiments. We need funding agencies to support scientists who produce sound negative results. And, as scientists, we must acknowledge that all important work should be recognized, irrespective of its outcome.<\/p>\n<p>Simply put, we need more honesty in science.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"emphasis\">doi: 10.1038\/d41586-019-02960-3<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>(\uc6d0\ubb38: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-019-02960-3?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nature%2Frss%2Fcurrent+%28Nature+-+Issue%29\">\uc5ec\uae30<\/a>\ub97c \ud074\ub9ad\ud558\uc138\uc694~)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; Publishers, reviewers and other members of the scientific community must fight science\u2019s preference for positive results \u2014 for the benefit of all, says<a href=\"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?p=4187\" class=\"more-link\">(more&#8230;)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays-on-science","category-lets-do-science"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1480,"url":"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?p=1480","url_meta":{"origin":4187,"position":0},"title":"High-profile journals put to reproducibility test","author":"biochemistry","date":"August 28, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 \u00a0 (\uc6d0\ubb38) \u00a0 \u00a0 Researchers replicated 62% of social-behaviour findings published in\u00a0Science\u00a0and\u00a0Nature\u00a0\u2014 a result matched almost exactly by a prediction market. \u00a0 \u00a0 A reproducibility effort has put high-profile journals under the spotlight by trying to replicate a slew of social-science results. In the work, published on 27 August\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Essays on Science&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Essays on Science","link":"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?cat=32"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3534,"url":"https:\/\/biochemistry.khu.ac.kr\/lab\/?p=3534","url_meta":{"origin":4187,"position":1},"title":"Companies persist with biomedical papers","author":"biochemistry","date":"May 16, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Corporate research in the life sciences endures, despite diminishing in other fields of science. \u00a0 Many advanced countries struggle to increase their productivity. 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