Editorial: Sweet nothings - the value of negative findings for scientific progress

How can we optimise learning from trials in child and adolescent mental health?

Improving child and adolescent mental health requires the careful development and rigorous testing of interventions and delivery methods. This includes universal school-based mindfulness training, evaluated in the My Resilience in Adolescence (MYRIAD) trial reported in this special edition. While discovering effective interventions through randomised controlled trials is our ultimate aim, null or negative results can and should play an important role in progressing our understanding of what works. Unfortunately, alongside publication bias there can be a tendency to ignore, spin or unfairly undermine disappointing findings. This creates research waste that can increase risk and reduce benefits for future service users. We advocate several practices to help optimise learning from all trials, whatever the results: stronger intervention design reduces the likelihood of foreseeable null or negative results; an evidence-informed conceptual map of the subject area assists with understanding how results contribute to the knowledge base; mixed methods trial designs aid explanation of outcome results; various open science practices support the dispassionate analysis of data and transparent reporting of trial findings; and preparation for null or negative results helps to temper stakeholder expectations and increase understanding of why we conduct trials in the first place. To embed these practices, research funders must be willing to pay for pilot studies and 'thicker' trials, and publishers should judge trials according to their conduct and not their outcome. MYRIAD is an exemplar of how to design, conduct and report a trial to optimise learning, with important implications for practice.

Promoting Learning from Null or Negative Results in Prevention Science Trials

There can be a tendency for investigators to disregard or explain away null or negative results in prevention science trials. Examples include not publicizing findings, conducting spurious subgroup analyses, or attributing the outcome post hoc to real or perceived weaknesses in trial design or intervention implementation. This is unhelpful for several reasons, not least that it skews the evidence base, contributes to research “waste”, undermines respect for science, and stifles creativity in intervention development. In this paper, we identify possible policy and practice responses when interventions have null (ineffective) or negative (harmful) results, and argue that these are influenced by: the intervention itself (e.g., stage of gestation, perceived importance); trial design, conduct, and results (e.g., pattern of null/negative effects, internal and external validity); context (e.g., wider evidence base, state of policy); and individual perspectives and interests (e.g., stake in the intervention). We advance several strategies to promote more informative null or negative effect trials and enable learning from such results, focusing on changes to culture, process, intervention design, trial design, and environment.

Evidence for Citation Networks in Studies of Free-Roaming Cats: A Case Study Using Literature on Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR)

Simple Summary

All aspects of an argument need to be evaluated in evidence-based scientific pursuit to prevent the development of self-reinforcing cohorts of studies through the cross-referencing of selected subsets of studies (citation bias). Controling populations of unowned cats using Trap–Neuter–Return and its variants (hereafter TNR) is an example of how a scientific topic develops and is communicated academically and publicly. We found 145 TNR publications between 2002–2019, with the last two years seeing a rapid increase in studies. Publication clusters occur, focusing on: population control, interactions with wildlife, disease transmission (including implications for pet cats, wildlife and humans), free-roaming cats, and feral and domestic cat management. A quarter of all studies were published in Open Access formats, which have the highest potential social impact because they are free to download, share and read. While it is encouraging that diverse views are expressed, the development of clusters of introspective topics risks reduced dialogue between groups of authors with differing views. Journal editors could encourage exchanges between groups by choosing reviewers from different camps to assess manuscripts and by asking authors to acknowledge alternative views.

Abstract

Trap–Neuter–Return and its variants (hereafter TNR) aims to control unowned cat populations. Papers on this topic form a useful case study of how how an area of literature grows, papers become influential, and citation networks form, influencing future study as well as public perceptions of the science. We analysed 145 TNR studies published 2002–2019. Common topics, identified by frequently used language, were population control, interactions with wildlife, disease transmission (including implications for pets, wildlife and humans), free-roaming cats, and feral and domestic cat management. One or more papers on each of these topics was judged influential because of high citations overall, high average citations/year, or frequent mentions in social media. Open Access papers were more influential in social media, raising greater public awareness than studies published in journals that were less accessible. While divergent views exist on a range of topics, the network analysis of the TNR literature indicated potential for forming self-reinforcing groups of authors. While it is encouraging that diverse views are expressed, there is a risk of reduced dialogue interactions between groups, potentially constraining dialogue to refine arguments, share information, or plan research. Journal editors could encourage communication by choosing reviewers from different camps to assess manuscripts and by asking authors to acknowledge alternative views.

Conflicts of interest and outcomes of clinical trials of antidepressants: An 18-year retrospective study

Pharmaceutical sponsorship, funding sources, and investigators' conflicts of interest may be potential influencers in the conduct and results of clinical trials, as well as in the promotion of psychiatric drug therapies. We report the results of an audit of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of antidepressants conducted from 2000 to 2017. We searched the Web of Science databases with a comprehensive search strategy to identify phase 2 and 3 RCTs. Out of the 1085 articles initially located, a total of 291 RCTs were identified and included in the final analyses. A higher percentage of RCTs conducted by employees of pharmaceutical companies reported favorable results than those with academic or governmental funding (76.90% vs. 60.60%); however, this association was not significant (Χ² = 2.47, P = 0.18). The data were further analyzed using bivariate and cluster analytical approaches, and the nonsignificant association persisted in both cases. However, analyses of industry-funded placebo-controlled trials (a subgroup of the 291 RCTs) revealed a higher proportion of results that were reported as significant compared to their counterparts with other funding sources (67% vs. 33%). This association was statistically significant (Χ² = 9.56, P = 0.002), indicating that there is evidence in support of conflicts of interest as a potential bias in the outcomes of RCTs conducted for antidepressants.

The Late Positive Potentials Evoked by Cigarette-Related and Emotional Images Show no Gender Differences in Smokers

When trying to quit, women are less likely than men to achieve long-term smoking abstinence. Identifying the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying women's higher relapse vulnerability will help clinicians to develop effective tailored smoking cessation interventions. Here we used event-related potentials (ERPs), a direct measure of brain activity, to evaluate the extent to which neurophysiological responses to cigarette-related and other emotional stimuli differ between female and male smokers. Both women and men showed similar patterns of brain reactivity across all picture categories; pleasant and unpleasant images prompted larger Late Positive Potentials (LPPs, a robust measure of motivational relevance) than neutral images in both groups, and cigarette-related images prompted lower LPPs than high arousing emotional images in both groups. Unlike previous studies, there were no differences between male and female smokers with regard to LPP responses to cigarette-related images. This suggests that the LPP may not be ideally suited to discriminate neurophysiological gender differences or that there are simply no gender differences in the neurophysiological responses to cigarette-related stimuli. We collected ERPs from 222 non-nicotine-deprived smokers (101 women) while they watched a slideshow that included high and low emotionally arousing pleasant and unpleasant pictures, cigarette-related, and neutral pictures. We used the mean amplitude of the LPP to assess the affective significance that participants attributed to these pictures.

Are failures to look, to represent, or to learn associated with change blindness during screen-capture video learning?

Although phenomena such as change blindness and inattentional blindness are robust, it is not entirely clear how these failures of visual awareness are related to failures to attend to visual information, to represent it, and to ultimately learn in visual environments. On some views, failures of visual awareness such as change blindness underestimate the true extent of otherwise rich visual representations. This might occur if people did represent the changing features but failed to compare them across views. In contrast, other approaches emphasize visual representations that are created only when they are functional. On this view, change blindness may be associated with poor representations of the changing properties. It is possible to compromise and propose that representational richness varies across contexts, but then it becomes important to detail relationships among attention, awareness, and learning in specific, but applicable, settings. We therefore assessed these relationships in an important visual setting: screen-captured instructional videos. In two experiments, we tested the degree to which attention (as measured by gaze) predicts change detection, and whether change detection is associated with visual representations and content learning. We observed that attention sometimes predicted change detection, and that change detection was associated with representations of attended objects. However, there was no relationship between change detection and learning.