Blog post: ajb: Publishing negative results

Recently the journal New Negatives in Plant Science, was launched with the aim of publishing negative, unexpected or controversial results in the field plant biology this.

 

 

 

 

 

This journal is aimed at plant science, but I have always thought that some kind of journal in mathematics that presents results that are 'close but no cigar' could be useful; for example one could present results of things that at first look should work, but do not. (Everybody's note book is full of such things!) However, no-one would want to publish results that are not correct. The only way I can see to turn this around is to develop 'no-go theorems'.

 

By 'no-go theorems' I mean clear mathematical reason why something the community expected to work does not. Such theorems are usually to be found in theoretical physics, but they can appear in pure mathematics also.

 

Such concrete statements are of course published in standard journals. Examples that spring to my mind are the Weinberg–Witten theorem, Coleman–Mandula theorem and the no-cloning theorem. Plenty of other examples exist.

 

Link

Why Science Needs to Publish Negative Results
Read and comment on the full post