Negative Results and Failed Replication in Photopolymer Research: Reporting, Censoring and Engineering Value

Negative results are routinely lost through publication bias, selective reporting and informal laboratory filtering. In photopolymer engineering this loss is costly because failed prints, absent property gains and failed replications often define process boundaries more directly than successful demonstrations. This review distinguishes informative negative evidence from uninformative failure, identifies common censoring mechanisms, and proposes a reporting structure for failed replication and null results. The objective is not to publish every unsuccessful trial, but to preserve failures that constrain an engineering claim or reveal hidden state dependence. ER-397.