Our Story

“We developed the Null Compass tool to transform the publishing landscape and make it easier for researchers to share their negative findings. We understand that the challenge goes beyond individuals - making negative results more visible will take shared effort across the research community, including journals, funders, and institutions.”
A/Prof Sandra Petty A/Prof Sandra Petty, Chief Medical & Scientific Officer and Co-Founder, CBMRT
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Our mission

Shining the light on dark data.

The Null Hypothesis Initiative is a multistakeholder program working to make more negative and null results discoverable in biomedical scientific record. The initiative - and CBMRT, the 501(c)(3) organization that hosts it - exists to help biomedical researchers properly classify, frame, and publish these results - and provide incentives and encouragement for researchers to do so.

To meet the team behind this work, meet the Null Compass team.

Our timeline

Building a more complete scientific record.

  1. A/Prof Sandra Petty and Dr Hugo Stephenson founded the Center for Biomedical Research Transparency and the Null Hypothesis Initiative to create space for null results in major biomedical journals.

  2. Development phase

    The CBMRT team developed a systematic approach to classifying negative research based on factors like study design rigor, statistical power, methodology, and the nature of the result. They also helped create space in leading journals for hundreds of authors to publish their negative results.

  3. 2023+ AI integration

    Null Compass uses AI to help analyze core aspects of null findings, suggest publication pathways, and prepare a draft abstract based on a structured classification framework. These outputs are starting points for researcher review, not scientific-validity or publication decisions.

  4. The project received a significant grant from CZI Open Science, enabling wide deployment, community feedback, and scaling.

  5. Today

    The Null Compass is openly available for all researchers, research institutions and research funders seeking to publish their negative results and more accurately represent the scientific record.

Ready to begin?

Start the Compass