If you’ve ever tried to do any large-scale experiment, you’ll know how difficult it is to stick to a plan. There are good reasons and bad reasons for not adhering to a plan, but if you’re claiming...
If you’ve ever tried to do any large-scale experiment, you’ll know how difficult it is to stick to a plan. There are good reasons and bad reasons for not adhering to a plan, but if you’re claiming to do science and you’re not even disclosing when you deviate from your proposed experiment, that should be totally disqualifying. Allowances should be made for those who are doing honest science, and they should get grant funding, prestige, etc. long before unscrupulous "researchers" who fish for positive results from botched work. That all said, the community needs to figure out a way to put less emphasis on achieving positive results. Negative results, produced from well designed experiments, are just as valid and helpful as positive ones in driving scientific progress.
If you’ve ever tried to do any large-scale experiment, you’ll know how difficult it is to stick to a plan. There are good reasons and bad reasons for not adhering to a plan, but if you’re claiming to do science and you’re not even disclosing when you deviate from your proposed experiment, that should be totally disqualifying. Allowances should be made for those who are doing honest science, and they should get grant funding, prestige, etc. long before unscrupulous "researchers" who fish for positive results from botched work. That all said, the community needs to figure out a way to put less emphasis on achieving positive results. Negative results, produced from well designed experiments, are just as valid and helpful as positive ones in driving scientific progress.