There is no news in the scientific community today. Maybe this is the biggest news.

If a scientific study brings new discoveries, then its value is self-evident. However, behind these glamorous studies, many studies that have not found significant results are slightly lonely and do not even get the opportunity to be published, although they are also of great value to the development of science. With the joint efforts of scientists and the academic publishing community, this situation is changing.

In contrast, some years-long and arduous research is little known. Because they do not produce decisive results, they do not seem to provide any evidence for solving scientific problems-although they can add more constraints to possible conclusions and bring us closer to answers and new discoveries.

These studies that do not get the expected results are called "null result". They drive us forward, enable us to avoid repeating the same mistakes, and guide future research. Without them, the development of science may slow down or even hinder. We can learn a lot from zero results, but they are not usually published in scientific publications. This will not only lead to the inefficiency of scientific research, but also show that there may be great problems in the current scientific publishing process.

"the fact that zero results are not published produces a strong distorting effect." "however, there is no direct solution to this problem," said Marcus Munafu, a psychologist at the University of Bristol in the UK. Because low-quality research is easy to produce zero results, it will not help to solve the fundamental problem if scientists simply produce low-quality research to produce more zero results in the literature. After all, our ultimate goal is to find the right answers to important questions. "

What is "zero result"?

If the research results can not be distinguished from the background noise, then the zero hypothesis (null hypothesis) can not be excluded, and we get zero results. Take the detection of gravitational waves as an example: the signals generated by gravitational waves are very weak and many noise sources affect the sensors of the Laser interference gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). If you want to detect gravitational waves clearly, you need to eliminate these noise sources. If we can't eliminate the interference of the noise source, we get zero result. The zero result does not mean that we have not detected the gravitational wave, it just means that we are not sure whether the gravitational wave has been detected.

Zero results are very useful in some fields, such as cosmology and gravitational wave astronomy. The publication of zero results can help scientists adjust the parameters of future experiments. However, in other fields, qualitative results are more important than quantitative results, and zero results are relatively ignored.

"part of the problem is that we are often unable to make quantitative predictions in the field of behavioral science and medicine," Munafu explained. So we are usually just looking for whether there is an effect or whether there is a correlation, regardless of size or intensity. And if we don't get significant results, we don't have any parameters to measure whether such a small effect makes sense biologically, theoretically, or clinically. There's nothing we can do with zero results. "

"No result" is of great value.

The proper use of zero results can lead to extraordinary discoveries. One of the most famous examples is the Michelson-Morey experiment conducted by physicists Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley in 1887. The two of them tried to measure the speed of the earth relative to the "light ether". At that time, the "optical ether" was considered to be the medium of light, just as water waves needed to travel in water.

In other cases, zero results can help us to improve experimental instruments and better design future experiments. The gravitational wave interferometer has not detected effective results for many years. Scientists have continuously improved the interferometer based on these experiments, and finally detected the gravitational waves produced by black hole collisions. So far, physicists at CERN have not detected dark matter signals in particle collision experiments, but these experiments limit what dark matter might be.

"Zero results are just one of all possible experimental results. Scientific experiments sometimes bring novel and surprising discoveries, sometimes they do not. " George George Smoot III, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley.

When it comes to "hard core" data, zero results are easier to interpret, but in other areas, there is little incentive to publish zero results. Because the meaning of "no significant results" is often unclear, studies that do have major findings receive more attention, more funding, and are more likely to be cited. Clinical trials that produce positive results are more likely to be published than those that produce negative or zero results. These things are important when deciding who will receive funding for research.

Moreover, scientists are also very busy, they have many potential research directions. Why delve into the zero hypothesis when you can choose questions that are more likely to be noticed and may lead to further research opportunities

Publish or hide

If zero results are not published, we may miss important information that will help us understand the world, lead to inefficiency, and even dampen the motivation of young scientists to pursue their careers. At this point, Munafu has first-hand experience. He tried to repeat an experiment during his PhD and naturally thought he would see some effect like his predecessors. "but I didn't find that effect in the experiment." "as a new researcher, you think, I must have done something wrong, maybe I'm not fit to do scientific research," Munafu said. "

"I was lucky to meet a senior scholar who told me,'Oh, yes, no one can repeat that result'. If you have worked in this field long enough, you can understand these things by talking to people at meetings or drawing on experience. If you're not as lucky as I am and someone tells you it's not your fault, it's just that the discovery itself is unreliable, then you may leave the field as a result. "

The academic publishing community is also working hard to solve this problem. In 2002, a special program was set up, the Journal of negative Biomedical outcomes (the Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine), to encourage results that would not normally be published. The project, which ended in 2017, says it has successfully completed its mission because many other journals have followed in its footsteps and started publishing more negative or zero-outcome research.

Change one's concept

This attitude may change. We have seen such changes. Smoot, for example, has gained a lot of insights from zero results. "the search for antimatter in cosmic rays is a zero-result experiment that leads me to believe that there is no large amount of antimatter in our galaxies and the larger universe, despite the wonderful symmetry between matter and antimatter." Smoot said.

"another experiment with zero results is to test whether the rotation of the universe violates the conservation of angular momentum. Although this zero result is conceivable, it is still very important in shaping our world view and cosmology, and it is also my original motivation to use cosmic microwave background radiation to observe and measure the universe. It leads to more zero results, but it also leads to some important findings. "

The shift may be slow. What we need to encourage is not zero results themselves, but so that studies that are well designed but achieve zero results can be explained and published. This is by no means an insignificant issue, which is of vital importance to scientific progress.

"it's important to find the right answers to valuable questions, but it sometimes means zero results." But I think we need to be care