IT IS NOT, HOWEVER, PARTICULARLY REWARDED: Why Discovering ‘Nothing’ in Science Can Be So Incredibly Important.
What we don’t usually hear about is the years of back-breaking, painstaking hard work that delivers inconclusive results, appearing to provide no evidence for the questions scientists ask – the incremental application of constraints that bring us ever closer to finding answers and making discoveries.
Yet without non-detections – what we call the null result – the progress of science would often be slowed and stymied. Null results drive us forward. They keep us from repeating the same errors, and shape the direction of future studies.
There is, in fact, much that we can learn from nothing.
Often, however, null results don’t make it to scientific publications. This not only can generate significant inefficiencies in the way science is done, it’s an indicator of potentially bigger problems in the current scientific publication processes.
