Small grants that pay scientists to write up abandoned projects
Failed projects are not published because nobody has the time. Paying for a few months of writing would recover years of otherwise lost work.
Every lab has unpublished null results from completed projects: a hypothesis tested carefully that did not hold. The cost of writing them up is a few months of a postdoc's time with no career reward. A funder programme offering short 'completion grants' conditional on deposit in a negative-results venue would recover this work at very low cost per result.
- Failures are hidden · Negative trials, failed drugs and abandoned programmes are rarely published, so the same mistakes are repeated.
- Funding follows fashion, not burden · Money goes to the cancers and questions that are easy or popular, not the ones that kill most or where a dollar would do most.
Pages like this
not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaGrant progress reports must list what did not work
Shares A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work, Failures are hidden.
- 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.
- 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.
- IdeaRegistered reports for cancer biology: the plan is peer-reviewed before the result
Shares A funder-backed, indexed journal of negative and inconclusive cancer results, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaBounties for documented failed replications of high-impact findings
Shares A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work, Failures are hidden.
- IdeaStop failing trials earlier with pre-registered aggressive futility rules
Shares Failures are hidden, Funding follows fashion, not burden.
- IdeaAn annual map of high-burden questions that nobody is funding
Shares Failures are hidden, Funding follows fashion, not burden.
- IdeaOne definitive ketogenic diet trial in glioblastoma, then stop
Shares Failures are hidden, Funding follows fashion, not burden.