I strongly disagree. The vast majority of published articles I stumble across conclude with "we didn't find anything". They are published in journals, but almost never make it into The Times. I'm definitely not saying research pressure doesn't exist or doesn't have an impact on research quality, but I think selection bias is hard at work here.
"We didn't find anything" is fine for a random journal (there is a saying in academia that everything gets published eventually), but that's not going to get you into Cell, Nature, or Science, or a similarly top-tier venue. That's where the stress lies, and why negative results are pointedly lacking in the literature.
