&gt; Why can&#x27;t people simply publish negative results?<p>Mainly because it&#x27;s not as interesting. For every positive result researchers find there are dozens of things they test that just don&#x27;t work.<p>Imagine if the <i>first</i> test of &quot;romantic priming&quot; didn&#x27;t work. Would the researchers really bother trying to publish &quot;Hypothesised romantic priming effect was just a wild hunch after all.&quot;? And would the journal accept it? No way.<p>Of course if you get a negative effect for an established &quot;fact&quot;, as in this case it <i>can</i> be published. But you have to be really really sure otherwise the reviewers will just say you did your experiment wrong.