Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Luke D. Conlin, Eric Kuo, Nicole R. Hallinen · 2018 · arXiv
A central aim of physics education research is to understand the processes of learning and use that understanding to inform instruction. To this end, researchers often conduct studies to measure the effect of classroom interventions on student learning outcomes. Many of these intervention studies have provided an empirical foundation of reformed teaching techniques, such as active engagement. However, many times there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the intervention had the intended effect, and these null results often end up in the file drawer. In this paper, we argue that null re
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Daniel Angerhausen, Amedeo Balbi, Andjelka B. Kovačević et al. · 2025 · arXiv
Future telescopes will survey temperate, terrestrial exoplanets to estimate the frequency of habitable ($η_{\text{Hab}}$) or inhabited ($η_{\text{Life}}$) planets. This study aims to determine the minimum number of planets ($N$) required to draw statistically significant conclusions, particularly in the case of a null result (i.e., no detections). Using a Bayesian framework, we analyzed surveys of up to $N=100$ planets to infer the frequency of a binary observable feature ($η_{\text{obs}}$) after null results. Posterior best fits and upper limits were derived for various survey sizes and compa
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
J. E. Ottoni, A. P. Baeta Scarpelli, Marcos Sampaio et al. · 2006 · arXiv
We apply Implicit regularization in the calculation of the one-loop graviton and gravitino corrections to the anomalous magnetic moment of the lepton in unbroken supergravity, which is known to be an important test for any regularization method. We find a null result as it is expected from supersymmetry. We compare our results with the ones obtained by using Differential Regularization and Dimensional Reduction, which are known to preserve supersymmetry at one-loop order.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Q. Riffard, F. Mayet, G. Bélanger et al. · 2016 · arXiv
The comparison of the results of direct detection of Dark Matter, obtained with various target nuclei, requires model-dependent, or even arbitrary, assumptions. Indeed, to draw conclusions either the spin-dependent (SD) or the spin-independent (SI) interaction has to be neglected. In the light of the null results from supersymmetry searches at the LHC, the squark sector is pushed to high masses. We show that for a squark sector at the TeV scale, the framework used to extract contraints from direct detection searches can be redefined as the number of free parameters is reduced. Moreover, the co
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Christopher Savage, Paolo Gondolo, Katherine Freese · 2004 · arXiv
We examine whether the annual modulation found by the DAMA dark matter experiment can be explained by Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), in light of new null results from other experiments. CDMS II has already ruled out most WIMP-nucleus spin-independent couplings as an explanation for DAMA data. Hence we here focus on spin-dependent (axial vector; SD) couplings of WIMPs to nuclei. We expand upon previous work by (i) considering the general case of coupling to both protons and neutrons and (ii) incorporating bounds from all existing experiments. We note the surprising fact that CMDS
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
F. W. Sun, Z. Y. Ou, G. C. Guo · 2005 · arXiv
We construct a projection measurement process for the maximally entangled N-photon state (the NOON-state) with only linear optical elements and photodetectors. This measurement process will give null result for any N-photon state that is orthogonal to the NOON state. We examine the projection process in more detail for N=4 by applying it to a four-photon state from type-II parametric down-conversion. This demonstrates an orthogonal projection measurement with a null result. This null result corresponds to a dip in a generalized Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer for four photons. We find that the d
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Rafael Ferraro, Daniel M. Sforza · 2004 · arXiv
95 years before Special Relativity was born, Arago attempted to detect the absolute motion of the Earth by measuring the deflection of starlight passing through a prism fixed to the Earth. The null result of this experiment gave rise to the Fresnel's hypothesis of an ether partly dragged by a moving substance. In the context of Einstein's Relativity, the sole frame which is privileged in Arago's experiment is the proper frame of the prism, and the null result only says that Snell's law is valid in that frame. We revisit the history of this premature first evidence against the ether theory and
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Giuseppe Bimonte · 2019 · arXiv
A recent experiment [R. A. Norte et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 121}, 030405 (2018)] probed the variation of the Casimir force between two closely spaced thin Al films, as they transition into a superconducting state, observing a null result. We present here computations of the Casimir effect for superconductors, based on the Mattis-Bardeen formula for their optical response. We show that for the Al cavity used in the experiment the effect of the transition is over two hundred and fifty times smaller than the experimental sensitivity, in agreement with the observed null result. We demonstrate th
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
H. C. Eggers, B. Buschbeck · 2013 · arXiv
A detailed understanding of all effects and influences on higher-order correlations is essential. At low charged multiplicity, the effect of a nonpoissonian multiplicity distribution can significantly distort correlations. Evidently, the reference samples with respect to which correlations are measured should yield a null result in the absence of correlations. We show how the careful specification of desired properties necessarily leads to an average-of-multinomials reference sample. The resulting internal cumulants and their averaging over several multiplicities fulfil all requirements of cor
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Karl Svozil · 2011 · arXiv
Radiative corrections to the dispersion of neutrinos in nonstandard vacuum may give rise to "boosts" in their speed. This could explain recent experimental evidence by the OPERA collaboration, as well as the null result indicated by the supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) measurements of neutrino and photon arrival times.
View details →Negative / Null Result Report
Mallory Wilson-Anderson, null null, null null et al. · 2017 · Journal of Applied and Educational Research
Throughout the country, students were identified as, “at risk” due to their lack of fluency proficiency on the Formative Assessment for Teachers (FAST). Students who did not attain grade-level fluency suffered from comprehending text,…
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Soichiro Kuwahara, Kipp Cannon · 2023 · arXiv
We previously described the development of a detection system for a novel class of transient gravitational-wave sources taking the form of Cherenkov-like bursts. Here, we have applied the system to the data of the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA O3 science run, and report a null result. The ad hoc waveform model is motivated by the conjectured emission of gravitational waves from a curvature source moving at super-luminal speed, and while there is no plausible natural or artificial source of such waves, we nevertheless use the null result to infer a tongue-in-cheek upper bound on the number density of near-E
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
A. Boveia · 2009 · arXiv
I describe recent signature-based searches for anomalous physics processes using up to 2.9/fb of data from the CDF or D0 detectors at the Fermilab Tevatron. While each search conveys its sensitivity by interpreting a null result in terms of one or more specific exotic models, the searches are designed to be broadly sensitive to many models.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Anand Bhattacharya, Igor Zutic, Oriol T. Valls et al. · 1998 · arXiv
In a recent Letter (Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, p.5640 (1998), cond-mat/9808249 v3), it was suggested that nonlocal effects may prevent observation of the nonlinear Meissner effect in YBCO. We argue that this claim is incorrect with regards to measurements of the nonlinear transverse magnetic moment, and that the most likely reason for a null result lies elsewhere.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
L. Cooper, G. E. Stedman · 1995 · arXiv
A ring-laser experiment, similar to the Canterbury ring laser, to detect axion- and {\sc qed}-induced vacuum birefringence is proposed. It uses a slowly modulated magnetic field and a novel polarization geometry. Both axion coupling and vacuum birefringence would modulate the Sagnac beat frequency. A null result could place sensitive bounds on the axion mass and on two-photon coupling.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
D. L. Khokhlov · 2008 · arXiv
It is revisited the Michelson-Morley experiment within the quantum mechanics framework. One can define the wave function of photon in the whole space at a given moment of time. The phase difference between the source and receiver is a distance between the source and receiver at the time of reception hence it does not depend on the velocity of the frame. Then one can explain the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment within the quantum mechanics framework.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Daniel Lima Nascimento · 2013 · arXiv
A reanalisis of the effect of a moving frame of reference is done, showing that the null result of the Michelson-Morley's experimente of 1887 on the possibility of detecting the variation of the velocity of light with respect to a moving observer, na observer at the Earth, was already implied in these equations; thereforewith no need of new ad hoc hypotheses to explain it in the classical framework. In fact, it will be shown that behind those equations is hidden the fascinating phenomenon of the absolute motion.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Pedro Augusto, Peter N. Wilkinson · 2000 · arXiv
A radio-based search for strong gravitational lensing, with image separations in the range 160-300 milliarcsec (mas), has yielded a null result for a sample of 1665 sources (Augusto, Wilkinson & Browne 1998) whose mean redshift is estimated to be ~1.3. The lensing rate for this previously-unexplored separation range, <1:555 at the 95% confidence level, is less than on arcsecond-scales - as expected from models of lensing galaxy populations. Lensing on 160-300 mas scales is expected to arise predominantly from spiral galaxies at a rate dependent on the disk-halo mass ratio and the evolving numb
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Andy Hocker · 1999 · arXiv
The most recently available results from searches conducted by the four LEP experiments at 189 GeV center-of-mass energy for Higgs bosons of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) are presented. No evidence for a signal has been observed, and the null result is used by the experiments, both individually and collectively, to exclude regions of the MSSM parameter space and to set lower limits on Higgs boson masses at 95% confidence level in constrained MSSM scenarios.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
G. He, R. Belanger, P. H. Hguyen et al. · 2018 · arXiv
The influence of long-range dipole interactions on two dimensional magnetism has been studied extensively in the spin-reorientation transition of ferromagnetic ultrathin films. Although there is a great deal of experimental information on the perpendicular domain phase that is stabilized by dipole interactions, the transitions to or from the domain phase are subtle and difficult to characterize experimentally. Magnetic susceptibility measurements show no divergence in the vicinity of the spin-reorientation transition as a function of thickness -- a null result that is difficult to interpret wi
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
G. Kaelbermann, J. M. Eisenberg, Andreas Schaefer · 1994 · arXiv
It is well known that in lowest order the skyrmion model of the nucleon gives vanishing spin content. With new data indicating a proton spin content $ΔΣ= 0.22\pm 0.14,$ it is an increasing challenge to find ways in which the skyrmion can move away from the null result. We show here that a particular term in the skyrmion lagrangian in SU(3) involving six derivatives of the field can, with plausible parameters, yield a spin content consistent with present experiment.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Anand Bhattacharya, Igor Zutic, Oriol T. Valls et al. · 1998 · arXiv
The angular dependence of the nonlinear transverse magnetic moment of untwinned high-quality single crystals of optimally doped YBCO have been studied at a temperature of 2.5K using a low frequency AC technique. The absence of any signature at angular period 2π/4is analyzed in light of the numerical predictions of such a signal for a pure d-wave order parameter with line nodes. Implications of this null result for the existence of a non-zero gap at all angles on the Fermi surface are discussed.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
CDF Collaboration · 2006 · arXiv
We present the results of a search for new physics in the jets plus missing transverse energy data sample collected from 368 pb^{-1} of ppbar collisions at sqrt{s}=1.96 TeV recorded by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. We compare the number of events observed in the data with a data-based estimate of the Standard Model backgrounds contributing to this signature. We observe no significant excess of events, and we interpret this null result in terms of lower limits on the fundamental Planck scale for a large extra dimensions scenario.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
G. Sardin · 2004 · arXiv
Within the framework of test-experiments, an original pointing set-up based on speed-induced deflection of a light-beam and using a high-resolution opto-electronic array as a position detector, is proposed. The device would provide a new way to ratify the first order optical equivalency of inertial systems and to sound its causal groundwork. The type of test provided applies to any device using beams, but here it has been adapted for an up-dated check-up of Michelson's experiment and to bear out the interpretation derived from its null result. Rather than searching for a speed-induced phase-sh
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Kargi Chauhan · 2026 · arXiv
AI scientist systems are beginning to automate the production, evaluation, and iteration of scientific hypotheses. Their promise is speed; their risk is that speed also scales errors embedded in the scientific record. We argue that a near-term risk is corpus failure: AI scientist systems are trained on and grounded in a literature that over-represents positive results and under-represents null findings. We formalise this distortion as the null result gap, estimate it across three domains (drug discovery ~0.60, psychology ~0.56, cancer biology ~0.35), and introduce an amplification index for re
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Sanjay M. Wagh, Abhijit H. Wagh · 2010 · arXiv
In this paper, we first discuss the concept of an emission wave. In the history of science, this is the first time we have discovered a new way in which (transverse) waves are realized in nature. It can therefore be expected to lead to important changes in the perspective about the nature of light or radiation. Then, we point out that the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment is a natural and straightforward consequence of light being an emission wave. Concepts of special relativity, of length contraction and of time dilation, are not required for this explanation, however.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
A. Laidlaw · 2001 · arXiv
Not only are the foundation theories mutually compatible, they are also compatible with local realism once this concept is properly formulated (without presuming atomism in addition to locality). Relativity Theory is reconstructed in the context of a preferred frame, but so as to secure the Relativity Principle in every experiment except the measurement of the preferred frame, defined by a null result for the dipole component of the Microwave Background Radiation (MBR). The 3D soliton approach to physical modelling is found to be consistent with both Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanical N
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
Megan H. McDuffie, Ephraim Fischbach, Dennis E. Krause et al. · 2021 · arXiv
We have reanalyzed data obtained by Potter in a 1923 experiment aimed at testing whether the accelerations of test masses in the Earth's gravitational field are independent of their compositions. Although Potter concludes that the accelerations of his samples compared to a brass standard were individually consistent with a null result, we show that the pattern formed from a combined plot of all of his data suggests the presence of a fifth force coupling to baryon number.
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
C. Giunti · 1998 · arXiv
Inspired by the recent proposal by Feldman and Cousins of a ``unified approach to the classical statistical analysis of small signals'' based on a choice of ordering in Neyman's construction of classical confidence intervals, I propose a new ordering principle for the classical statistical analysis of Poisson processes with background which minimizes the effect on the resulting confidence intervals of the observation of less background events than expected. The new ordering principle is applied to the calculation of the confidence region implied by the recent null result of the KARMEN neutrino
View details →Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science
R. C. Verma, M. P. Khanna · 1995 · arXiv
According to the Coleman-Glashow null theorem if all the symmetry breaking effects belong to the same regular representation (octet in the case of SU(3) and {\bf 15} in the case of SU(4)) and are generated in a tadpole type mechanism, the strangeness changing (charm changing) weak transitions generated through the S$_{6}$ (S$_{9}$) tadpole must vanish. Exploiting this null result, we find relations between the BBP coupling constants which allow us to write the coupling constants in terms of two parameters and baryon masses. Fixing these two parameters ( $g_{NNπ}$ and $g_{ΛΣπ}$) from experiment
View details →