Agreed -- would also love to see an incentive structure around publishing negative results. One of the areas of research I think is the most exciting is artificial photosynthesis, and it&#x27;s currently at the phase where the researchers are trying to discover efficiency gains by just trying out a bunch of different materials.<p>Take this recent publication [1]:<p>&gt; For water oxidation, the photoanode surface was protected from corrosion by a 62.5 nm
layer of amorphous, hole-conducting TiO2 that was grown by atomic-layer deposition (ALD).<p>&gt; The TiO2 layer
significantly improves the stability of III-V photoanodes in a tandem structure for water
oxidation while the tandem structure produces sufficient photovoltage to sustain the efficient,
unassisted production of hydrogen by water splitting in aqueous alkaline electrolytes.<p>They discovered that coating the photoanode with 62.5nm of TiO2 helps stabilize the reaction. But who knows how many materials they went through to get that one? And how many different coating thicknesses they tried before settling of 62.5nm? This tech could be next-gen solar, would be great to see the global rate of discovery increase. Perhaps YC Research can start this trend?<p>[1] Joint Center for Artitificial Photosynthesis - <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;authors.library.caltech.edu&#x2F;59897&#x2F;1&#x2F;c5ee01786f.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;authors.library.caltech.edu&#x2F;59897&#x2F;1&#x2F;c5ee01786f.pdf</a>