OK, I'm going to regret this later, but I've just got to weigh in on the "null result" thing. If more people/scientists actually accepted the "null result" as a valid result (or the failed hypothesis, etc), I think that science would be far more advanced than it is today. Far too many researchers (and I'm not saying all, or most, but some is too many) fudge the data to get results, and it seems (I'm not a scientist, so feel free to smack me down) that there is a culture of not publishing "failed" experiements. In reading quasi-scientific publications (Smithsonian, National Geographic, Natural History), it is often refreshing to see something like "Our hypothesis was proved wrong," in the text.
Just my two bits.
