[nick238]

Yeah, I agree with your first point, but maybe misunderstood your reply? If there's nothing "surprising" about the result, it's not interesting, so not publishable. The article's first example, however, did seem to be surprising to the researcher's community, so it should have been published.

[SeanLuke]

Sure. What I said, or had meant to say, was in reply to people complaining that there was some kind of cartel against negative results. Rather, what we're seeing is just the natural, if unfortunate, response to the basic problem with negative results as a whole. You can't just treat them as the same as positive results: because of their numerosity they require unusual justification for their publication.