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Browse the failure-mode index

21,234 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Replication FailureOpen accessSocial Sciences

Findings on Summer Learning Loss Often Fail to Replicate, Even in Recent Data

Joseph Workman, Paul von Hippel, Joseph J. Merry · 2023 · Sociological Science

It is widely believed that (1) children lose months of reading and math skills over summer vacation and that (2) inequality in skills grows much faster during summer than during school. Concerns have been raised about the replicability of evidence for these claims, but an impression may exist that nonreplicable findings are limited to older studies. After reviewing the 100-year history of nonreplicable results on summer learning, we compared three recent data sources (ECLS- K:2011, NWEA, and Renaissance) that tracked U.S. elementary students' skills through school years and summers in the 2010

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

The role of goal-directed and habitual processes in food consumption under stress after outcome devaluation with taste aversion.

Eike Kofi Buabang, Yannick Boddez, Oliver T. Wolf et al. · 2022 · Behavioral Neuroscience

People are more likely to engage in various suboptimal behaviors such as overeating, addictive behaviors, and short-sighted financial decision-making when they are under stress. Traditional dual-process models propose that stress can…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Cardiometabolic phenotypes and mitochondrial DNA copy number in two cohorts of UK women

Anna L. Guyatt, Kimberley Burrows, Philip A. I. Guthrie et al. · 2017 · Mitochondrion

The mitochondrial genome is present at variable copy number between individuals. Mitochondria are vulnerable to oxidative stress, and their dysfunction may be associated with cardiovascular disease. The association of mitochondrial DNA copy number with cardiometabolic risk factors (lipids, glycaemic traits, inflammatory markers, anthropometry and blood pressure) was assessed in two independent cohorts of European origin women, one in whom outcomes were measured at mean (SD) age 30 (4.3) years (N=2278) and the second at 69.4 (5.5) years (N=2872). Mitochondrial DNA copy number was assayed by qua

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Negative / Null Result ReportBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Modelling vocal anatomy's significant effect on speech

Bart de Boer · 2010 · Journal of Evolutionary Psychology

This paper investigates the effect of larynx position on the articulatory abilities of a human-like vocal tract. Previous work has investigated models that were built to resemble the anatomy of existing species or fossil ancestors. This…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Exosome secretion kinetics are controlled by temperature

Anarkali Mahmood, Zdeněk Otruba, Alan W. Weisgerber et al. · 2023 · Biophysical Journal

When multivesicular endosomes (MVEs) fuse with the plasma membrane, exosomes are released into the extracellular space where they can affect other cells. The ability of exosomes to regulate cells nearby or further away depends on whether…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Evaluation of GWAS candidate susceptibility loci for uterine leiomyoma in the multi-ethnic NIEHS uterine fibroid study

Brahim Aı̈ssani, Kui Zhang, Howard W. Wiener · 2015 · Frontiers in Genetics

We evaluated the association of 56 candidate SNPs identified in two published genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of uterine leiomyoma (UL), or fibroids, with the risk and tumor size in the multi-ethnic uterine fibroid study (NIEHS-UFS). The selected SNPs were genotyped in 916 premenopausal women of African American (AA) and European American (EA) descents and their association with the outcomes was evaluated in race-stratified models and in meta-analysis of risk in NIEHS-UFS and discovery and replication GWAS in the Japanese population. We report moderate associations of variant rs4954368

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

The antihypertensive MTHFR gene polymorphism rs17367504-G is a possible novel protective locus for preeclampsia

Liv Cecilie Vestrheim Thomsen, Nina S. McCarthy, Phillip E. Melton et al. · 2016 · Journal of Hypertension

OBJECTIVE: Preeclampsia is a complex heterogeneous disease commonly defined by new-onset hypertension and proteinuria in pregnancy. Women experiencing preeclampsia have increased risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) later in life.…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

TRAF1/C5but NotPTPRCVariants Are Potential Predictors of Rheumatoid Arthritis Response to Anti-Tumor Necrosis Factor Therapy

Helena Canhão, Ana Maria Rodrigues, María José Santos et al. · 2015 · BioMed Research International

BACKGROUND: The aim of our work was to replicate, in a Southern European population, the association reported in Northern populations between PTPRC locus and response to anti-tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) treatment in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We also looked at associations between five RA risk alleles and treatment response. METHODS: We evaluated associations between anti-TNF treatment responses assessed by DAS28 change and by EULAR response at six months in 383 Portuguese patients. Univariate and multivariate linear and logistic regression analyses were performed. In a second step to con

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEngineering

Treatment of Glioma Using neuroArm Surgical System

Yaser Maddahi, Kourosh Zareinia, Liu Shi Gan et al. · 2016 · BioMed Research International

The use of robotic technology in the surgical treatment of brain tumour promises increased precision and accuracy in the performance of surgery. Robotic manipulators may allow superior access to narrow surgical corridors compared to freehand or conventional neurosurgery. This paper reports values and ranges of tool-tissue interaction forces during the performance of glioma surgery using an MR compatible, image-guided neurosurgical robot called neuroArm. The system, capable of microsurgery and stereotaxy, was used in the surgical resection of glioma in seven cases. neuroArm is equipped with for

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEarth and Planetary Sciences

No statistically significant effect of a short-term decrease in the nucleation rate on atmospheric aerosols

E. M. Dunne, Lindsay Lee, Carly Reddington et al. · 2012 · Atmospheric chemistry and physics

Abstract. Observed correlations between short-term decreases in cosmic ray ionisation and cloud and aerosol properties have been attributed to short-term decreases in the ion-induced nucleation rate. We use a global aerosol microphysics model to determine whether a 10 day reduction of 15% in the nucleation rate could generate a statistically significant response in aerosol concentrations and optical properties. As an upper limit to the possible effect of changes in ion-induced nucleation rate, we perturb the total nucleation rate, which has been shown to generate particle concentrations and nu

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Does recreational scuba diving have clinically significant effect on routine haematological parameters?

Antonija Perović, Nora Nikolac, Marina Njire Bratičević et al. · 2017 · Biochemia Medica

INTRODUCTION: Scuba diving represents a combination of exercise and changes in environmental conditions. This study aimed to evaluate changes in haematological parameters after recreational scuba diving in order to identify clinically significant changes. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study included males, 17 recreational divers, median age (range) 41 (30-52) years. Blood samples were taken before diving, immediately after diving to 30 meters for 30 minutes, 3 hours and 6 hours after diving. Complete blood counts were analyzed on the Cell Dyn Ruby haematology analyzer. Statistical significance be

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Longitudinal changes of white matter microstructure following traumatic brain injury in U.S. military service members

Ping‐Hong Yeh, Sara M. Lippa, Tracey A. Brickell et al. · 2022 · Brain Communications

Abstract The purpose of this study was to analyze quantitative diffusion tensor imaging measures across the spectrum of traumatic brain injury severity and evaluate their trajectories in military service members. Participants were 96 U.S. military service members and veterans who had sustained a mild traumatic brain injury [including complicated mild traumatic brain injury (n = 16) and uncomplicated mild traumatic brain injury (n = 68)], moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (n = 12), and controls (with or without orthopaedic injury, n = 39). All participants had been scanned at least twice,

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Measuring and tracking obesity inequality in the United States: evidence from NHANES, 1971-2014

Tae‐Young Pak, Susana Ferreira, Gregory Colson · 2016 · Population Health Metrics

BACKGROUND: Because people care about their weight relative to peers and society, obesity inequality plays a role in explaining obesity incidence and the impacts of being obese on subjective well-being. While the increase in obesity prevalence and mean body mass index (BMI) is well documented, the measurement of distributional changes and corresponding obesity inequality is yet to be fully explored. METHODS: The present study analyzed BMI data for adults aged 20 to 74 from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES) I (1971-1974), II (1976-1980), III (1988-1994), and contin

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

A Speculative Efficiency Analysis of the London Metal Exchange in a Multi-Contract Framework

Sascha Otto · 2011 · International Journal of Economics and Finance

We analyze the speculative efficiency of the six base metals traded at the London Metal Exchange (LME) for the post-Tin Crisis period from 1991-2008. Especially the influence of different futures contracts on the one side and different underlyings on the other side provides economic insights for market participants like hedgers and speculators. We focus on the 3-month and 15-month futures contracts for all six base metals and conduct single-contract test for every base metal applying an ARMA process. This system is expanded to the multi-contract case, modeling the forecast error as an ARMAX pr

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Social Support Predicts Differential Use, but not Differential Effectiveness, of Expressive Suppression and Social Sharing in Daily Life

Lisanne S. Pauw, Hayley Medland, Sarah J. Paling et al. · 2022 · Affective Science

Abstract While emotion regulation often happens in the presence of others, little is known about how social context shapes regulatory efforts and outcomes. One key element of the social context is social support. In two experience sampling studies ( N s = 179 and 123), we examined how the use and affective consequences of two fundamentally social emotion-regulation strategies—social sharing and expressive suppression—vary as a function of perceived social support. Across both studies, we found evidence that social support was associated with variation in people’s use of these strategies, such

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Inflammation-Related Gene Variants as Risk Factors for Pancreatic Cancer

Kaye M. Reid–Lombardo, Brooke L. Fridley, William R. Bamlet et al. · 2011 · Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention

BACKGROUND: Recent reports support an association between chronic inflammation and progression to pancreatic cancer (PC). METHODS: This case-control, candidate gene association study evaluated 1,354 Caucasian patients with pancreatic…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Foreign accent does not influence cognitive judgments.

André Luiz Souza, Arthur B. Markman · 2013 · eScholarship (California Digital Library)

A recent paper by Lev-Ari and Keysar (2010) reported that the processing fluency associated with non-native speech causes non-native speakers to sound less credible.The authors found that the same trivia statements were rated as less…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessHealth Professions

Psychometric Performance of a Novel Measure of Social Support Among Spanish-Speaking Immigrant Latino Gay Men

Paul A. Gilbert, Scott D. Rhodes · 2012 · Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences

Social support is protective for a variety of health outcomes, and individuals living outside their country of origin ("sojourners") might use social support in distinctive ways. The authors performed a confirmatory factor analysis of the…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessHealth Professions

An Analysis of Patient Perceptions and Expectations to Dental Implants: Is There a Significant Effect on Long-Term Satisfaction Levels?

Shane J. J. McCrea · 2017 · International Journal of Dentistry

Here we present an analysis of patient perceptions and expectations to dental implant placement and their prosthetic reconstruction, to then consider whether they have an effect on long-term satisfaction levels. A Post-Treatment Completion Questionnaire was designed to analyse whether patient satisfaction is influenced by age and/or gender; has an effect on patient-reported self-confidence levels; contributes to increased levels of oral hygiene; provides further insight into the average pain levels during and after the surgical intervention; or influences further acceptance of dental implant s

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Negative / Null Result ReportComputer Science

IntFlow: Integrating Per-Packet and Per-Flowlet Switching Strategy for Load Balancing in Datacenter Networks

Qingyu Shi, Fang Wang, Dan Feng · 2020 · IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management

Datacenter network load balancing schemes handle network traffic generated by massive different applications. Some packet-based or flowlet-based schemes capture traffic bursts for load balancing. But frequent rerouting within a flow can…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

KC-SMARTR: An R package for detection of statistically significant aberrations in multi-experiment aCGH data

Jorma J. de Ronde, Christiaan Klijn, Arno Velds et al. · 2010 · BMC Research Notes

BACKGROUND: Most approaches used to find recurrent or differential DNA Copy Number Alterations (CNA) in array Comparative Genomic Hybridization (aCGH) data from groups of tumour samples depend on the discretization of the aCGH data to gain, loss or no-change states. This causes loss of valuable biological information in tumour samples, which are frequently heterogeneous. We have previously developed an algorithm, KC-SMART, that bases its estimate of the magnitude of the CNA at a given genomic location on kernel convolution (Klijn et al., 2008). This accounts for the intensity of the probe sign

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

DNA Methylation Signatures of Breastfeeding in Buccal Cells Collected in Mid-Childhood

Veronika V. Odintsova, Fiona A. Hagenbeek, Matthew Suderman et al. · 2019 · Nutrients

Breastfeeding has long-term benefits for children that may be mediated via the epigenome. This pathway has been hypothesized, but the number of empirical studies in humans is small and mostly done by using peripheral blood as the DNA source. We performed an epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) in buccal cells collected around age nine (mean = 9.5) from 1006 twins recruited by the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR). An age-stratified analysis examined if effects attenuate with age (median split at 10 years; n<10 = 517, mean age = 7.9; n>10 = 489, mean age = 11.2). We performed replication

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Null results of oxytocin and vasopressin administration on mentalizing in a large fMRI sample: evidence from a randomized controlled trial

Mark A. Straccia, Adam R. Teed, Perri L. Katzman et al. · 2021 · Psychological Medicine

BACKGROUND: Although potential links between oxytocin (OT), vasopressin (AVP), and social cognition are well-grounded theoretically, most studies have included all male samples, and few have demonstrated consistent effects of either neuropeptide on mentalizing (i.e. understanding the mental states of others). To understand the potential of either neuropeptide as a pharmacological treatment for individuals with impairments in social cognition, it is important to demonstrate the beneficial effects of OT and AVP on mentalizing in healthy individuals. METHODS: = 186) of healthy individuals, we exa

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