It appears research center mk01 has the same (-80% - limit) when selecting Metachemoinformatics, this is on the py science one. It ia hard to tell with all the TURD updates if this is in fact a real problem or some side effect of the repeated selecting of the upgrades and all the recipe changes, might be a easy thing to have a quick look at. Kicalk it causing some short term problem so no science for me for now.
its an actual issue. when i adjusted the speed boosts to account for farm modules bonuses i decided to just go with the numbers based on what they should be for the mk4 as it would just give a bit of extra speed at the lower tiers. i didnt think about the fact that it will also have the same effect for negative speed and is an issue. working on the fix its just taking a bit more to do which is why i hadnt done it already when i didnt think it was necessary.
tl:dr. negative speed is set for mk4 values and it doesnt work well with lower tiers. am fixing