ideasIdea
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.
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.
What would test it
Add the field at one large funder; measure completion quality and downstream use after eighteen months.
Maturity
speculative
Who has to act
policy
Cost to try
Small (under $1M)
Years to first evidence
1
Bottlenecks it attacks
- Failures are hidden · Negative trials, failed drugs and abandoned programmes are rarely published, so the same mistakes are repeated.