# Grant progress reports must list what did not work

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-null-result-reporting/  
OnCo record `idea-tr2-null-result-reporting` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Researchers report their successes to funders every year. Make them report their failures too, in a structured, searchable way.

## Summary

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.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Within two years the database contains at least 5,000 structured null results from oncology grants and is queried by researchers designing new experiments, as shown by usage logs and surveys.
- Rationale: Reporting to funders is already compulsory, so the marginal effort is small. Funders have the leverage that journals lack.
- Proposed test: Add the field at one large funder; measure completion quality and downstream use after eighteen months.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: policy

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Failures are hidden): Anderson et al., Compliance with results reporting at ClinicalTrials.gov (NEJM 2015): https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa1409364

## Connected records

- institutions: [Cancer Research UK](https://onco.cc/institutions/cruk/), [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/)
- ideas: [A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-preclinical-negative-registry/)
- bottlenecks: [Failures are hidden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-negative-results/)
- key papers: [Compliance with results reporting at ClinicalTrials.gov](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-anderson-n-engl-j-med/)

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