Dear readers of the All Results Journals:Biol,
We are pleased to introduce to
you The All Results Journals: Biol (All
Res. J. Biol), a very unique journal that publishes articles and reviews with
negative results in the field of Biology. This journal represents the first
total open access source for research concerning negative results and will be a
valuable resource for researchers all over the world; experts and those new to
the field alike.
Our immediate goal is to
provide scientists with responsible and balanced information in order to
advance faster, improve experimental designs and clinical decisions. Many
journals skew towards only publishing “positive” data; that is, data that
successfully proves a hypothesis. The All
Results Journals: Biol is the home for negative or “secondary” data:
experimental documentation of hypotheses that turn out not to be true, or other
experiments that do not lead to an advance of a specific hypothesis but are,
nevertheless, a true rendering of that experiment. For example, if a researcher
set up a cell-based experiment and the experiment did not work in a particular
set of conditions, it would be very useful for other researchers to know this
(to avoid time and money wasting and better planning).
There is a huge untapped
resource of experimental data locked up in laboratory notebooks that could be
of great service to the scientific community at large. Many experiments fail to
produce results or expected discoveries. This high percentage of ‘failed’
research can still generate high quality knowledge. The main objective of The All Results Journals: Biol is to
recover and publish these valuable pieces of scientific information.
As we publish negative results,
the newer generation of researchers will not waste their time and money
repeating the same studies and finding the same results (negative in this
case). We believe that negative results are high-level pieces of knowledge that
deserves to be published.
The All Results Journals: Biol is a peer reviewed journal developed to
publish original, innovative and novel research articles resulting in negative
results. This peer-reviewed scientific journal publishes theoretical and
empirical papers that report negative findings and research failures in Biology
and related fields. Submissions should have a negative focus; experiments that
yield negative results will be given more preference.
All theoretical and methodological perspectives
are welcomed. We also encourage the submission of short papers/communications
presenting counter-examples to usually accepted conjectures or to published
papers.
Negative results
in Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with
the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin,
evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing
many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines. It seems with our ever increasing
ability to dissect biological systems to finer detail, simplicity of
explanation becomes more elusive. With this in mind, The All Results Journals serves as a platform and resource for your
important negative observations that stand the test of rigorous scientific
scrutiny and methodology in the complex fields of biology. Data collected
under exceptional experimental design that may not support a convention in a
given area of research should and can be reported. Negative results
shape the development of effective therapeutic agents, help us understand what
cell types are critical for autoimmune pathogenesis and redefine the molecular
targets of a drug. These data serve to drive the scientific method
forward by showing the path not to follow.
As scientists we strive for
remarkable observations within biological systems that will further expand our
understanding of the human condition, aging, cancer, autoimmunity, etc.
At the All Results Journal we
know how science gets done; sometimes the pieces just don’t add up. These
negative results drive our next step at the bench but are rarely published.
We are working to bring to light these types of observations to be
published under peer review for the greater good. Our goal is to make
accessible a manuscript about what didn’t work so you can build on the mistakes
of others rather than simply repeat them. Instead of three steps forward
and two steps back, Science could just move forward. We now have an
unbiased forum to present a negative finding.
In Cancer research or
chemotherapeutic development, for example, the trend is to publish data showing
efficacy. We’d offer that inefficacy could also be of great importance to
the scientific community. What agents failed, in what types of cancer and why;
the latter question albeit difficult to answer. One could imagine the same
trends emerging from this type of work in terms of gene expression profiling,
proteomics and biomarkers. Agent X will not be effective in cancer Y
because of overexpression of biomarker Z. A manuscript focused on the
inefficacy of a particular chemotherapeutic agent could assist in moving the
cancer biology field forward by offering a forum to share with the greater
cancer research community the same negative findings that may have contributed
to the development of a highly effective agent.
Breaking this cycle of
publishing only positive results will undoubtedly improve our ability to make
educated decisions at the bench in biology. Furthermore, there are many
research based scientific disciplines that would benefit from bringing this
important work to the mainstream of scientific publication and peer review.
This trend (resistance to publish negative results or unsuccessful
experiments) has been recently defined as “publication bias” and has major
ramifications for the health of citizens. Publication bias is a growing problem
and some authors are now extensively writing about it. 1
Not only Health but also
Ecology has shown this publication bias and have been widely discussed by
different authors in recent years.2-5 Generally, results that either
fail to reject a null hypothesis or do not accord with the current consensus
are often not published, which may lead to a biased representation of natural
processes.6 Although it is believed that
publication and dissemination bias is less pronounced in Ecology than Medicine,3, 4 there is the same
resistance among the authors of several fields to submit their negative
results. This problem does exist in Ecology and others sub-fields of Biology
(Botany, Biochemistry, Genetics, etc.) and is probably accentuated by the lack
of a venue for publishing negative results like The All Results Journals: Biol.
Contradictions of current
expectations can also suffer bias. This trend might be perpetuated by the
attitude of researchers who have deliberately hidden negative results or by the
ones who neglected or forgot about results entirely (mainly due to lack of
time). Large research groups might continue with other experiments
without stopping, analysing or reporting
negative results. In these cases, the authors contribute to a growing problem
because they consider those results to be less interesting and important than
they actually are.3 It may contribute to biases in
meta-analytical studies due to negative results being less accessible to the
wider scientific community.
Another important type of
publication bias in Ecology (as in other sub-fields) arises from replication.
Biological systems are difficult and costly to replicate under natural
conditions (i.e. natural variables are very heterogeneous in space and time)
and replicate studies often reveal nothing new and/or produce negative results.5 The All Results Journals: Biol can help to fight the publication
bias problem in Biology (and its sub-fields) first, providing an excellent way
for negative results (non-significant, contradict current expectations, lack of
replication, etc.) publication and second, contributing to increase the
negative results’ knowledge for scientific progress. Additionally, researchers
must overcome their self-imposed barriers to the publication of negative
results and give them the attention they deserve.
In this issue
In this first issue we feature
an updated review on malaria, highlighting some negative results obtained in
treatments. The paper highlights the plasmodium genes of interest playing a
role in resistance to first line therapies such as chloroquine and
sulfadoxine-pyrimethanine. The respective mode of action of these
and other second generation compounds are discussed and presented as the next
line of combination therapies that will hopefully overwhelm resistance genes.
The authors provide the scope and history of antimalarial drug
development as well as the problems facing implementation of drug regimens,
diagnosis and follow-up statistics of patients. At the heart of this
review is the failure and limitations of some of the most recently developed
anti-malarial agents at various stages of clinical development. Therein
the authors review shortcomings in study design germane to current non-human
primate models available. They go on to discuss the biochemical rationale
of the various agents and offset this with potential side effects of the drugs.
The subject matter at hand, namely the difficulties with development of
an effective antimalarial agent and achieving clinical success are in the
spirit of the All Results Journal.
The second article describes
the negative results obtained when testing a new protecting ischemic stroke
drug. Thromboembolic occlusion of intracerebral vessels is responsible for the
majority of ischemic strokes. The intrinsic pathway for thrombus formation is
initiated when coagulation factor XII (FXII) becomes activated on a negatively
charged surface followed by successive activation of factor XI (FXI) and factor
IX (FIX). It has been shown that FXII-deficient mice were protected from
pathological thrombus formation so the use of FXII inhibitors would be
associated with relatively low rates of therapy-related hemorrhages, the major
clinical complication associated with current anticoagulant therapies. The
authors tested the new chemical COU254, a 3-carboxamide-coumarine that
selectively inhibits FXIIa, in a rodent model. The authors found no differences
between controls and mice treated with COU254 when they induced cerebral
ischemia. In addition, they didn’t find any significant differences in infarct
volumes in both groups. Furthermore, analysis of the neurological status in
both groups did not reveal any beneficial effects of COU254 in acute ischemic
stroke or any differences in thrombus formation. The authors pointed out some
reasons why these negative results were obtained like optimum dosage or correct
timing of drug administration after ischemic stroke induction. We agree with
the authors that further preclinical evaluation is needed. This negative result
opens the door to new antithrombotic drug improvements.
Epilogue
We strongly believe that the
total Open Access format of the new journal has clear benefits for science,
medicine and the general public: First, all articles are freely and universally
accessible online, and so an author's work can be read by anyone at no cost.
The easy and widespread availability of articles significantly enhances reading
and citation of the results. Second, all accepted articles are immediately
published with no delay and therefore, allow particularly rapid dissemination
of new results. Third, The All Results
Journals: Biol. allows interactive discussion and annotation of
articles providing an online tool for open discussion of data. Fourth, there is
no size restriction for articles and no publication charges to authors. Authors
hold copyright for their work and grant anyone the right to reproduce and
disseminate the article, provided that it is correctly cited.
There is an ethical imperative
and a significant challenge to ensure that finite research resources are better
used, avoiding replication of previous experiments leading to an optimization
on the use of resources. The All Results
Journals: Biol is tackling that challenge, providing to scientists a new
tool for publishing their negative results. We invite you to dig into your file
drawer or hard drive for the negative results and submit them to The All Results Journals: Biol. All
results are good results.
References
1. McGauran, N.; Wieseler, B.; Kreis, J.;
Schuler, Y. B.; Kolsch, H.; Kaiser, T. (2010). Reporting bias in medical
research - a narrative review. Trials, 11,
37.
2. Kotiaho, J. S.; Tomkins,
J. L. (2002). Meta-analysis, can it ever fail? Oikos, 96, (3), 551-553.
3. Koricheva, J. (2003). Non-significant
results in ecology: a burden or a blessing in disguise? Oikos, 102, (2), 397-401.
4. Leimu, R.; Koricheva, J.
(2004). Cumulative meta-analysis: a new tool for detection of temporal trends
and publication bias in ecology. Proc
Biol Sci, 271, (1551), 1961-6.
5. Kotze, D. J., Johnson,
C.A., O'Hara, R.B., Vepsäläinen K. & Fowler, M.S. (2004). Editorial. The Journal of Negative Results - Ecology
and Evolutionary Biology, 1, 1-5.
6. Knight, J. (2003).
Negative results: Null and void. Nature, 422, (6932), 554-5.