Measuring Nothing, Repeatedly

There have been many recent discussions of the replication crisis in psychology and other social sciences. This has been attributed, in part, to the fact that researchers hesitate to submit null results and journals fail to publish such results. In this book, Allan Franklin and Ronald Laymon analyze what constitutes a null result and present evidence, spanning a 400-year history, that null results play significant roles in physics. They begin with Galileo’s experiments on falling bodies and conclude with tests of the weak equivalence principle in general relativity, the search for physics beyond the Standard Model, and the search for neutrinoless double beta decay, all in the 21st century.

As these case studies make evident, null results have refuted theories, confirmed theories, provided evidence for potential new theories to explain, introduced new experimental techniques, corrected previous incorrect or misinterpreted results, and have been used to explore previously unstudied phenomena. What makes these many roles possible is the development of increasingly more accurate replications of a zero value result and the value of these replications for the effective treatment of systematic uncertainty. The book concludes with a brief analysis of certain fundamental differences between physics and social psychology in the role played by replication where these differences explain the absence of a replication crisis in physics.