It's all positive [State of the Art]

It is easy to publish positive results, but difficult to publish negative results. Not all failures can be useful, but sometimes negative information can be positive. Those of us who conduct research and publish the results know that our experiments hardly ever work the first time. There are protocol adjustments to make, temperatures to control, additional measurements to make, timing issues, calibration problems, and a host of other reasons why failures occur. Biological experiments are often much more sensitive to specific conditions than are other kinds. Enzymes require optimal conditions to be effective, biochemicals degrade with time, target cells adapt to new environments, and temperature fluctuations may have profound effects. There are so many reasons why an experiment may not have the expected results that extreme care is usually required to be successful.