In the Geosciences, as in other science fields, a study may have best chances for acceptance in scientific literature if it confirmes a theory or conceptual idea that is well accepted in the community or if it reaches a positive result. The cases that fail in their test of a new method or idea often end up deep down in a drawer. Also physically sound simulations may remain unpublished even when they could correspond to a concept that has not yet been considered because of for example scarce data. Similarly, negative results such as numerical methods that fail to converge or that turn out not to be worth pursuing also never get published. This is potentially a waste of time and resources within our community as other scientists may set about testing the same idea or model setup without being aware of previous failed attempts. Similarly, in the community we may be struggling with setups of models and techniques without knowing that others are facing the same issues.

In this session we encourage constructive discussions of unexpected, controversial, failed and/or negative results on any aspect of tectonics, structural geology, geodynamics, geomorphology and related fields. The conveners promise that they will also submit their own failed attempts!