One of the best forms of evidence that can be used in determining treatment is a meta analysis. Without going into to much detail this is basically where you sum up with statistics the results of all the Randomised Controlled Trials that has been performed. Unfortunately Scientific Journals are more likely to publicise RCTs that show a treatment is succesful as opposed to ones that aren,t. This means that meta analysis may show that a treatment is more useful then what it actually is
Journals are less likely to publice any research that gives a negative result, so a scientist may look at the literature and see that no work has been published on a particular gene. They then may spend a considerable time scanning it for mutations etc. However there is a good chance that this work has already been done a few years earlier by someone else who could not get there work published due to journals not being interested
A Journal of negative results would solve all of this
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It is interesting that people are more and more thinking on publishing negative results. I've recently discovered The All Results Journals, a new journal focus on publishing negative results and think the idea is great.
ReplyDeleteHave a look to their published articles (they are good, believe me) at:
http://www.arjournals.com/ojs/index.php?journal=Biol&page=issue&op=current
and
http://www.arjournals.com/ojs/index.php?journal=Chem&page=issue&op=current
Their slogan is also great (in my opinion) : All your results are good results! (specially the negative)
Cheers,
Lewis