Being positive about negative results
Sharing what went wrong helps fellow researchers
Before I started my first research project, I was told the brutal truth that most new experiments do not lead to desired results; four pages of a research article might result from several years of hard work. We can precisely plan a synthetic pathway based on similar examples we’ve read, only to find that a seemingly innocent atom we’ve added has drastically changed the behaviour of our molecule, sending our work straight into the metaphorical rubbish bin. Since we spend so much time performing experiments that eventually fail, why don’t we include them in publications?