Negative Irreproducible Tweets For Science Publishing

New submitter mwolfam writes "Every scientist has at least one paper or graph tucked in a folder that lies in a dusty corner of the hard drive next to that dancing baby that used to be all the rage. The data is interesting, but doesn't lend itself to the creation of the grand narrative you must have for a traditional publication. It's time to expand traditional scientific publication to include a place for the data that normally falls through the cracks: short but interesting bits of data, negative results, and irreproducible results."

Comments

Traditional journals already do this.

[bkaul01]

Such a thing already exists: many journals (at least in my field) accept submissions for "technical notes" that aren't full-fledged papers, but merely describe a brief, interesting bit of data, etc. It's more a question of whether the researcher has any incentive to put the time into writing them up and submitting them than a problem of a lack of venues for us to do so.

Re:Traditional journals already do this.

[kharchenko]

Tweets are an abomination. You still have to describe what you've done properly, otherwise the reported result is of no value.
There are journals that were created specifically to report negative results. Irreproducible results, on the other hand, are not a scientific matter.

Re:Traditional journals already do this.

[grqb]

I think the tweet idea is slightly different. For example, a lot of work that a scientist does is collecting data to make sure equipment is working properly. Usually these experiments aren't worth publishing and probably wouldn't make it past a peer review because 1) they're usually not novel experiments 2) they don't tell a story or add much value, but I think it could be useful to share this type of data. I mean, if you've collected it, why not share it?

Re:Traditional journals already do this.

[dgatwood]

In established scientific fields, that might be true, but on the bleeding edge of research, initial failures quite frequently lead to subsequent successes when the hypothesis is correct, but the test equipment, methodology, or sample size is insufficient. Similarly, initial successes often stop working.

One great example of this is medical research. Frequently, things that aren't initially reproducible in studies later turn out to occur far more reliably in the real world. Half the recalls in medicine occurred because some rare negative side effect that only showed up once in the first test and wasn't reproducible in subsequent small scale tests turned out to be fairly common once the product went out into the wild.

For another great example, consider the cat's whisker radio. Although the initial experiment was a success, later attempts to reproduce the same results were fraught with failure. In spite of that, eventually they figured out how to make it work fairly reliably, and that design became the earliest semiconductor-based diode. Were it not for someone having the courage to try to reproduce those early experiments repeatedly until they figured out what the difference was, the computer you used to type your comment would likely not exist.

All it takes is a single critical difference in an experiment to make the difference between successfully reproducing an outcome and not reproducing it. Since humans are far from perfect, basic logic dictates that a fair number of irreproducible experiments would probably be reproducible if someone hadn't forgotten to document some very subtle detail of the experiment (or worse, some very subtle detail of the test subjects). If you aren't seeing this in practice, it probably indicates that there is a wealth of knowledge waiting for those with the courage and insight to try harder to reproduce experiments that initially seemed unreproducible.

In other words, either you're wrong, or we're missing out on a lot of important discoveries. Take your pick.

Of limited use

[Gemeinhardt]

While not a horribly bad idea, it would be of limited use. The reason science doesn't dwell on the odd irregular result, and especially on results that can't be reproduced, is that you cannot draw any conclusions from them.

Re:Of limited use

[tlhIngan]

While not a horribly bad idea, it would be of limited use. The reason science doesn't dwell on the odd irregular result, and especially on results that can't be reproduced, is that you cannot draw any conclusions from them.

Maybe not by itself, but sometimes interesting correlations pop up because of strange combinations. Or more likely, someone gets the results they were expecting, but sees an odd variance they can't explain. Perhaps if it was seen elsewhere, the odd data correllation may have some merit in investigation.

It's like an odd bug you find when using some software. You don't think it's important (perhaps it happens occasionally), but someone else decides to just mention it in passing, and then others chime in as it happened to them, and then hey, perhaps it's a bigger bug than expected.

Just putting it out there may bring others to notice they see the same thing as well and then provide incentive to do proper research in it.

Useful

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see this being really useful, especially if the raw data could be easily accessed and manipulated. On the other hand, I, as a researcher, would be loath to simply give away data, even data for which I can forsee little use, just on the off chance that it could be used in a future publication, or form the basis of further work. A rather ignoble attitude, I'll admit, but one which I'm sure many others would share, and I think this would be a huge obstacle for the idea.

More Tweets in a cacophony

[ackthpt]

Well, if it gets it out there, but why Twitter? It's going to have to compete with all the usual garbage which is trending.

Brett6565 Vampires in yet another TV show :P #fail #bloodsuckers

Wignut Yankees sign another pitcher #goyanks

Waddleduck Another show about lawyers #fail #bloodsuckers

Cherbonevski sci.fi/fd98guyrr Nucleotides enzymolgy in e. nemtodii #science #wowwee #knowledge

yellomello Moar lolcat pictures of my kitty! bit.ly/r9d8gns9ds #LOL #CATS #LOLCATS

cityfied Tevez to Milan! Good-bye and don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out! #MCFC #TEVEZ
 

Asimov's

[gmuslera]

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it) but 'That's funny...'

It's been done

[SoftwareArtist]

Journal of Failed Crystallization Experiments

Ok, some of the humor is a bit esoteric for those who don't know much molecular biology. You'll just have to take my word for it that it's really funny!

Isn't this what the web is for?

[perpenso]

Isn't this what the web is for? Put it on the web, let google index it, and it will be far more accessible that anything else ... "national firewalls" permitting of course.

Article Titles

[bill_mcgonigle]

The purpose of a title is to give the reader some inkling of what might come next.

"Negative Irreproducible Tweets For Science Publishing" may be the worst [not incorrect] Slashdot article title ever.

Something like "A Plan for Publishing Minor Science Results on the Web" (or do better, you're the submitter) would at least not leave readers perplexed.

Re:what the hell are you talking about?

[crutchy]

i agree. scientists who ignore outliers are potentially tampering with the outcome of their paper. outliers aren't necessarily correct, but they can help a reader judge the reliability of the method used or the competence of the person performing the method. you don't necessarily draw conclusions from outliers when writing your paper, but ALL results should be included in the report somewhere (often as an appendix), regardless of their validity or contribution to the results reduction and analysis.

arXiv papers do not have to be in a journal

[ODBOL]

I am a moderator for arXiv, and I am quite sure that submissions are filtered only for prima facie relevance, and do not have to be "accepted in a journal." The format of arXiv is probably not suitable for all sorts of data, but lots of data can be presented as text and can be placed in arXiv.

All of this has been done / possible / etc.

[oneiros27]

For #1, there was The Journal of Earth Science Phenomena (hasn't had anything new in over a year), where they'd publish what they called 'micro-articles', which was mostly just a picture and a short description. Unlike a tweet, it actually had some peer-review, and enough information to make the item useful in its own regard. In solar physics, it's not a journal, but there's the Heliophysics Event Registry, where scientists can submit events/features/phenomena, but it's not peer reviewed. (and some are submitted via pipeline processing, so there might not've been any human involved in the detection other than writing the software)

For the negative results, there are plenty of dedicated journals in various fields, and if there isn't, there's always PLoS ONE. It's possible that they might take the irreproducable stuff, too. In their description, they say they'll take anything that's 'technically sound'. They do use a model that's different from other peer-reviewed journals, and go with the author-pays approach, which many of the other journals claim makes them invalid (yet, those same journals charge even more to make your article 'open access' if it gets accepted)

Re:what the hell are you talking about?

[RockDoctor]

There are whole journals for "Irreproducable Results". And prizes too!

Negative trial database in beta

[ananyo]

A database of negative results is actually already in beta: http://figshare.com/ Psychology professor Jonathan Schooler also called for a negative trials database in Nature in February last year. He says it's possible such results could explain the 'decline effect' that plagues science http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110223/full/470437a.html