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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."
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.
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.
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...'