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Journal Devoted to the Null Hypothesis
Xcott R13, 3(0,R4) writes "It may sound dull even for academia, but I personally am thrilled that someone is starting a journal devoted entirely to scientific research that fails to produce significant results. Researchers tend to publish successes, so we rarely ever read about experiments or approaches that didn't pan out, leaving future researchers to reinvent the square wheel. The "Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis" intends to make some of this valuable boring information available. And such a wonderful title: too bad it's an online journal, else I could put it on the bookshelf next to the Annals of Improbable Research. Causing an explosion that would destroy the Universe."
Not getting an answer is as important as getting one.
"Well this expirement/proof did nothing, so lets try something else."
And scientific progress moves on. Just like all the failed proofs of Fermat's Last Therom.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
Richard Feynman was a very strong advocate of having somewhere to publish non-positive results. He was distressed by the credibility added to the existence of psychic powers, influence of star signs, alien abductions and so on, by scientific research. It arises from the fact that if you test your hypothesis to, say, the 5% level, then on average one in twenty researchers is going to get a false positive. People tend to publish the positive results, and the nineteen negative results get forgotten because they're boring, giving a misleading picture. Of course, all the research could be completely accurate, but the skewed statistics make that irrelevant.
So Feynman dearly wanted a Journal of the Null Hypothesis. I think I found that in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman".
Any sufficiently self-referential snowcloned
That's a brilliant post.
Some additional examples of the tyranny of the orthodox:
Jenner with the Smallpox vaccine.
TG Morton and anasthesia
Pasteur (he's not a doctor, we don't have to listen to him)
de Broglie (was about to be denied a PhD when Einstein commented how insightful his work was)
John 17:20