{"entity":{"id":"idea-tr2-null-result-reporting","kind":"idea","name":"Grant progress reports must list what did not work","aka":[],"tldr":"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.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Failures are hidden): Anderson et al., Compliance with results reporting at ClinicalTrials.gov (NEJM 2015)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa1409364"}],"tags":[],"related":["nci","cruk","idea-tr2-preclinical-negative-registry"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-negative-results"],"keyPapers":["paper-anderson-n-engl-j-med"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"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.","test":"Add the field at one large funder; measure completion quality and downstream use after eighteen months.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"policy","cost":"small","horizonYears":1},"route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-null-result-reporting/","neighbours":{"institution":[{"id":"cruk","kind":"institution","name":"Cancer Research UK","route":"/institutions/cruk/"},{"id":"nci","kind":"institution","name":"National Cancer Institute (NIH)","route":"/institutions/nci/"}],"idea":[{"id":"idea-tr2-preclinical-negative-registry","kind":"idea","name":"A registry for preclinical experiments that did not work","route":"/ideas/idea-tr2-preclinical-negative-registry/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-negative-results","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Failures are hidden","route":"/bottlenecks/b-negative-results/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-anderson-n-engl-j-med","kind":"paper","name":"Compliance with results reporting at ClinicalTrials.gov","route":"/key-papers/paper-anderson-n-engl-j-med/"}]}}