{"id":173671,"date":"2025-10-01T21:03:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T21:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/173671\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T21:03:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T21:03:13","slug":"why-im-happy-to-admit-to-my-research-failures-and-you-should-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/173671\/","title":{"rendered":"why I\u2019m happy to admit to my research failures, and you should too"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The open-science movement has promoted the sharing of scientific protocols, statistical-analysis programs and data files<\/a>. These efforts have undoubtedly made it easier to see how researchers come to their conclusions. But methods and findings are just the tip of the iceberg. Research often involves a long journey, during which scientists reassess their expectations, pivot and adapt to unexpected challenges and constraints<\/a>. All too often, this is hidden from view.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Is my study useless? Why researchers need methodological review boards<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I vividly remember the first experiment I conducted for my PhD in economics, investigating the conditions under which trust forms between strangers. I had built a solid theoretical framework, designed the experiment \u2014 in which students played a trust game \u2014 carefully, and optimistically named my database \u2018AwesomeData\u2019. But when I ran my first sessions, the results made no sense. My participants weren\u2019t behaving as theory \u2014 or even common sense \u2014 would suggest, because my set-up made the task too confusing.<\/p>\n

The fall was hard. Despite all my preparation, no one had told me what the research process looks like. The project ended up going through many iterations, a completely redesigned experiment and six rejections from journals before a paper was published. These setbacks remain invisible to anyone reading the final manuscript.<\/p>\n

For science to be truly open, we need to pay more attention to these twists and turns<\/a>, which happen in all research. Not disclosing this information causes three key problems.<\/p>\n

First, it prevents readers of research from properly understanding a project\u2019s robustness and generalizability. In some fields, small pilot tests are used to fine-tune an experiment\u2019s design \u2014 such as showing that a programme works only if participants receive incentives, or if a message is phrased in a particular way. Details of these pilots (and so the lessons learnt) rarely appear in print. Policymakers might then assume that the intervention can be scaled up regardless of incentives or wording.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Impact factors are outdated, but new research assessments still fail scientists<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Second, lack of disclosure stops other researchers from learning how to work more efficiently and invest their resources wisely. This can exacerbate inequities. Researchers with sparse social networks can struggle to access the informal knowledge held by veterans in their field, yet this is easier for well-connected researchers, who often come from wealthier regions or groups.<\/p>\n

Finally, sharing the trial-and-error aspects of research matters for mental health. Humans have a hard time learning from missing evidence \u2014 the \u2018what you see is all there is\u2019 phenomenon described by psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Hiding failures can lead researchers to overestimate how much others succeed, fuelling impostor syndrome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The open-science movement has promoted the sharing of scientific protocols, statistical-analysis programs and data files. These efforts have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4792,8809,59,4230,39544,4231,19549,90,8360,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-173671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-careers","9":"tag-ethics","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","12":"tag-lab-life","13":"tag-multidisciplinary","14":"tag-publishing","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-scientific-community","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}