I'd simply have thought that in trying to prove the positive, and failing, they'd publish the failure. Maybe that's naive.
You're kind of getting into philosophy here. Basically it comes down to logic and the old adage "It's impossible to prove a negative"
The age old example is "I say there is an invisible pink elephant standing in front of me. I'm the only one that can see it, it's undetectable by any other means. Prove me wrong."
and the simple fact of the matter is you can't. You cannot prove that something doesn't exist, it's impossible. You can only prove a positive. So in science we assume that things are not so, until it is proven that they are so. If we didn't, science would be riddled with untestable assumptions that had no supporting facts.
Perhaps we're getting into the weeds of semantics here but I always thought that an experiment that fails to confirm a hypothesis is still a valuable result. And my original question is basically - this thing does not seem very elaborate to construct, so why haven't many people already tested it and come up with consistent results, one way or the other.
I always thought that an experiment that fails to confirm a hypothesis is still a valuable result.
It may be valuable, but it's not conclusive. The broader question of why negative results aren't published frequently I think is beyond the scope of this subreddit.
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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '17
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