Grant progress reports must list what did not work
Researchers report their successes to funders every year. Make them report their failures too, in a structured, searchable way.
Annual progress reports to funders describe positive findings. A mandatory structured field for hypotheses tested and not supported, with model system and readout, shared across funders and made searchable (with an embargo if requested), would create a negative-results database as a by-product of existing paperwork.
- Failures are hidden · Negative trials, failed drugs and abandoned programmes are rarely published, so the same mistakes are repeated.
Pages like this
not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaA home for the animal and organoid experiments that failed
Shares Failures are hidden, Cancer Research UK, National Cancer Institute (NIH).
- IdeaPre-register animal efficacy studies like clinical trials
Shares Failures are hidden, Cancer Research UK, National Cancer Institute (NIH).
- IdeaLiving systematic reviews of animal and organoid evidence before every new trial
Shares A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaSmall grants that pay scientists to write up abandoned projects
Shares A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaA funder-backed, indexed journal of negative and inconclusive cancer results
Shares A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work, Failures are hidden, Cancer Research UK.
- IdeaA target de-risking index that counts failures as well as successes
Shares A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaPublish per-patient trial cost benchmarks and target halving them
- IdeaBounties for documented failed replications of high-impact findings
Shares A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work, Failures are hidden.