The need for reporting negative results – a 90 year update

Abstract

In January of 1927, Dr. Richard D. Mudd of Detroit published a letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association, seeking to vindicate his grandfather, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, against charges of conspiring in a murder [1]. The victim was U.S. President Abraham Lincoln; the murderer, actor John Wilkes Booth (see Appendix). In this editorial, I, an erstwhile actor, would like to vindicate my own grandfather, Dr. John Rosslyn Earp, for a letter he published on the same day, just one column over, in the very same issue of the journal [2]. But I mean “vindicate” in its other sense—to prove correct—as we shall see.