Negative control

Control samples are necessary to ensure that your experiments are working correctly. Controls are always run side by side with the actual experiment.

A negative control contains all the reagents used in the experiment, except for the material that is being observed or detected. Negative controls check for nonspecific binding and false positive results. They validate the positive results. If there are no negative controls, we cannot be sure that the results are truly positive.

Further reading:

Positive control