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Comment by iamwithnail | Hacker News Reader

'Real science' - thanks for that. ;-)

I think the issue I'm trying to get at - I suspect there is less value in null proving a lot of social science hypotheses - the impacts are smaller than physical constants of the universe (or finding say, that the Higgs Boson didn't exist) - if I prove, because my empirical work says so, that discourse can be meaningfully (for a given value of meaningful...) analysed in a new way, that's great, and will advance some other work. But proving (even repeatedly) that it can't be won't really change anything, imo.

I guess though, the main issue is: I'm sure as hell not going to get published saying it, which ties back nicely to the point made in Nature, really.

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> I suspect there is less value in null proving a lot of social science hypotheses

Yes, but that applies equally to proving positive social science results. My point wasn't to compare social science to other sciences, it was only to point out the value of replicating null results in general -- that it stands equal to replicating positive results.

> if I prove, because my empirical work says so, that discourse can be meaningfully (for a given value of meaningful...) analysed in a new way, that's great, and will advance some other work. But proving (even repeatedly) that it can't be won't really change anything, imo.

Both findings have equal weight, therefore both findings deserve equal attention from replicators. By contrast, ignoring null results is a disaster for whatever science they occur in -- it may mean that other people might spend a lot of time spinning their wheels studying things that have already been found wanting.

When you can identify a single null point to replicate, then sure. But there are lots of endeavors (what rate of positive feedback maximized reinforcing a behavior?) where there isn't a single null that defines a theory or disproves a reasonable conjecture. I'd guess in physics this might be possible, and math, but maybe nowhere else in science.

I don't understand your objection.

Most research leads to no result. Most of the remaining research leads to only marginal results. Most of the research that leads to important results isn't still ground breaking. Only a tiny minority of the rare class of research that leads to important results is ground breaking.

That's true in any field, in any period.

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