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Browse the failure-mode index

21,239 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.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessImmunology and Microbiology

A triad of somatic mutagenesis converges in self-reactive B cells to cause a virus-induced autoimmune disease

Clara Young, Mandeep Singh, Katherine Jackson et al. · 2025 · Immunity

The unexplained association between infection and autoimmune disease is strongest for hepatitis C virus-induced cryoglobulinemic vasculitis (HCV-cryovas). To analyze its origins, we traced the evolution of pathogenic rheumatoid factor (RF) autoantibodies in four HCV-cryovas patients by deep single-cell multi-omic analysis, revealing three sources of B cell somatic mutation converged to drive the accumulation of a large disease-causing clone. A method for quantifying low-affinity binding revealed recurring antibody variable domain combinations created by V(D)J recombination that bound self-immu

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Primary Sjögren’s Disease: a review of unmet need, outcome measures, therapeutic advances and health economic impacts. Lessons from the NEw Clinical Endpoints in primary Sjögren’s Syndrome: an Interventional Trial based on stratifYing patients (NECESSITY) Innovative Health Initiative (IHI)

Simon Bowman, Raphaèle Séror, Raphaël Porcher et al. · 2025 · Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases

Primary Sjögren's disease (pSjD) is an autoimmune rheumatic disease involving exocrine glands and associated with high symptom burden (dryness, fatigue, pain), systemic features and salivary gland dysfunction. B-cell hyperactivity is common, with an increased risk of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma. This review describes the unmet need, scientific validity of outcome measures, optimisation of clinical trial design, therapeutic advances and how clinical improvement relates to health-related quality of life, additional quality-adjusted life years and economic benefit in pSjD. It deriv

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Advanced IDS: a comparative study of datasets and machine learning algorithms for network flow-based intrusion detection systems

Julio Cesar Munguía Mondragón, Paula Branco, Guy-Vincent Jourdan et al. · 2025 · Applied Intelligence

Globally, cyberattacks are growing and mutating each month. Intelligent Intrusion Network Detection Systems are developed to analyze and detect anomalous traffic to face these threats. A way to address this is by using network flows, an…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

TREM2 in Neurodegenerative Disorders: Mutation Spectrum, Pathophysiology, and Therapeutic Targeting

Hye-Won Yang, Danyeong Kim, YoungSoon Yang et al. · 2025 · International Journal of Molecular Sciences

TREM2 (triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2) is a membrane-bound receptor primarily expressed on microglia in the central nervous system (CNS). TREM2 plays a crucial role in regulating immune responses, phagocytosis, lipid metabolism, and inflammation. Mutations in the TREM2 gene have been linked to various neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and Nasu–Hakola disease (NHD). These mutations are suggested to impair microglial activation and reduce the ability to clear amyloid aggregates, leading to ex

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Generative AI in Academic Writing: A Comparison of DeepSeek, Qwen, ChatGPT, Gemini, Llama, Mistral, and Gemma

Ömer Aydın, Enis Karaarslan, Fatih Safa Erenay et al. · 2026 · Turkish Journal of Engineering

DeepSeek v3, developed in China, was released in December 2024, followed by Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 Max in January 2025 and Qwen3 235B in April 2025. These free and open-source models offer significant potential for academic writing and content…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics and Astronomy

X-point radiation: From discovery to potential application in a future reactor

M. Bernert, T.O.S.J. Bosman, T. Lunt et al. · 2025 · Nuclear Materials and Energy

Power exhaust is a crucial issue for future fusion reactors. Divertor detachment and the required power dissipation fractions of about 95% are foreseen to be achieved by impurity seeding. In a tokamak, at high seeding levels the radiation often concentrates in a small region inside the confined plasma near the X-point. In early observations the so-called X-point radiator (XPR) often led to back-transitions to L-mode or disruptions. In metal tokamaks or with higher available heating power, these regimes can be stabilized and are now established on AUG, JET, TCV, KSTAR and WEST. The XPR is a col

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Human brain changes after first psilocybin use

Terence J. Lyons, Merle Spriggs, Leevi Kerkelä et al. · 2026 · Nature Communications

Psychedelics have robust effects on acute brain function and long-term behavior but whether they also cause enduring functional and anatomical brain changes is largely unknown. In an exploratory, placebo-controlled, within-subjects, electroencephalography (EEG), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study in 28 healthy, entirely psychedelic-naive participants, anatomical and functional brain changes are detected from one-hour to one-month after a single high-dose (25 mg) of psilocybin. Increases in cognitive flexibility, psychological insight, and well-being are seen at one-month. Diffusion ten

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessMedicine

Chest computed tomography outcomes in a randomized clinical trial in cystic fibrosis: Lessons learned from the first ataluren phase 3 study

Harm A.W.M. Tiddens, Eleni‐Rosalina Andrinopoulou, Joe McIntosh et al. · 2020 · PLoS ONE

A phase 3 randomized double blind controlled, trial in 238 people with cystic fibrosis (CF) and at least one nonsense mutation (nmCF) investigated the effect of ataluren on FEV1. The study was of 48 weeks duration and failed to meet its primary endpoint. Unexpectedly, while FEV1 declined, chest computed tomography (CT) scores using the Brody-II score as secondary outcome measures did not show progression in the placebo group. Based on this observation it was concluded that the role of CT scans in CF randomized clinical trials was limited. However, more sensitive scoring systems were developed

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessSocial Sciences

Could Alcohol Abuse Drive Intimate Partner Violence Perpetrators’ Psychophysiological Response to Acute Stress?

Sara Vitoria-Estruch, Ángel Romero‐Martínez, Marisol Lila et al. · 2018 · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Proactively aggressive individuals have been shown to present a different pattern of autonomic nervous system (ANS) dysregulation from that of individuals characterized by reactive violence. Although attempts have been made to classify intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators based on ANS reactivity to acute stress, subsequent studies have failed to replicate this classification. Notably, the proposed classification neglected the role of chronic alcohol abuse in ANS dysregulation and the fact that this dysregulation entails an abnormal stress response. The aim of the present study was to a

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Negative / Null Result ReportSocial Sciences

DOES TRUST PROMOTE ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN A DEVELOPING COUNTRY?

Kitae Sohn, Illoong Kwon · 2016 · The Singapore Economic Review

Trust was found to promote entrepreneurship in the US. We investigated whether this was true in a developing country, Indonesia. We failed to replicate this; this failure was true whether trust was estimated at the individual or community…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessSocial Sciences

No Significant Difference - Unless you are a Jumper

Richard Fendler, Craig Ruff, Milind Shrikhande · 2018 · Online Learning

Much of the e-education literature suggests that there is no significant difference in aggregate student learning outcomes between online and face-to-face instruction. In this study, we develop a model that forecasts the grade that individual students would have most likely earned in the alternate class setting. Students for whom the difference between the actual grade received in one class format (for example, online) and the forecasted grade in the other class setting (for example, face-to-face) is one full letter grade or higher are called “jumpers.” Our findings indicate that jumpers are n

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessImmunology and Microbiology

Shaping Neonatal Immunization by Tuning the Delivery of Synergistic Adjuvants via Nanocarriers

Soumik Barman, Francesco Borriello, Byron Brook et al. · 2022 · ACS Chemical Biology

) cells, and germinal center (GC) B cells along with the IgG2c-skewed humoral response in vivo. Dual-loaded cGAMP/CL075-PSs did not outperform admixed cGAMP-PS and CL075-PS in vivo. These data validate an optimally designed adjuvantation…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Medium-sized protein language models perform well at transfer learning on realistic datasets

Luiz Carlos Vieira, Morgan L. Handojo, Claus O. Wilke · 2025 · Scientific Reports

Protein language models (pLMs) can offer deep insights into evolutionary and structural properties of proteins. While larger models, such as the 15 billion parameter model ESM-2, promise to capture more complex patterns in sequence space, they also present practical challenges due to their high dimensionality and high computational cost. We systematically evaluated the performance of various ESM-style models across multiple biological datasets to assess the impact of model size on transfer learning via feature extraction. Surprisingly, we found that larger models do not necessarily outperform

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

Motivational Computing: Transformer-Based Automation of Implicit Motive Coding

Joyce S. Pang, Hiram Ring, Kate Y Huang et al. · 2026 · Journal of Personality Assessment

Implicit motives have a clear relation to observed behavior but are time-consuming to measure. Automating the content coding of implicit motives has been a pursuit since the 1960s, but has not been widely adopted due to limitations with…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

The Role of Economic and Environmental Variables in Green Growth: Evidence from Saudi Arabia

Ihsen Abid · 2025 · Engineering Technology & Applied Science Research

Saudi Arabia, as one of the world’s leading oil producers, faces critical challenges in transitioning to sustainable economic growth. The heavy reliance on oil exports, coupled with rapid urbanization and environmental degradation, underscores the urgent need for green growth strategies tailored to the Kingdom’s unique socioeconomic and environmental context. This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the Green Growth Index (GGI), which measures sustainable economic growth, and analyze the short-term and long-term relationships between key variables such as environmental technology

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics and Astronomy

The COLIBRE project: cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution

Joop Schaye, Evgenii Chaikin, Matthieu Schaller et al. · 2026 · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

ABSTRACT We present the COLIBRE galaxy formation model and the COLIBRE suite of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. COLIBRE includes new models for radiative cooling, dust grains, star formation, stellar mass loss, turbulent diffusion, pre-supernova stellar feedback, supernova feedback, supermassive black holes, and active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback. The multiphase interstellar medium is explicitly modelled without a pressure floor. Hydrogen and helium are tracked in non-equilibrium, with their contributions to the free electron density included in metal-line cooling calculations. Th

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Obeticholic Acid and Other Farnesoid-X-Receptor (FXR) Agonists in the Treatment of Liver Disorders

Stefano Fiorucci, Ginevra Urbani, Eleonora Distrutti et al. · 2025 · Pharmaceuticals

The Farnesoid-X-receptor (FXR) is a bile sensor involved in the regulation of bile acid homeostasis, fibrosis, inflammation, and metabolism. Obeticholic acid (OCA), a semisynthetic derivative of chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA), initially named 6-ethyl-CDCA or INT-747, is the first in a class of FXR ligands that have been approved for clinical use for the treatment of patients with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) who are unresponsive or intolerant to ursodeoxycholic acid. In this narrative review, we will examine the current status and future perspective of clinical use of OCA. Based on results

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPsychology

The influence of income and testosterone on the validity of facial width-to-height ratio as a biomarker for dominance

Emilou Noser, Jessica Schoch, Ulrike Ehlert · 2018 · PLoS ONE

Research has indicated that men's facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is part of an evolved system of social dominance, aggression, and power. fWHR has been linked to antisocial behavior, measured by self-reported aggression, but recent studies have failed to replicate this finding. To overcome these inconsistencies, influencing factors such as social status have to be taken into account in order to explain the relationship between fWHR and aggression. In particular, income has been shown to be an important influencing factor in this relationship. Furthermore, previous findings suggested that

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Prognostic and predictive role of EGFR pathway alterations in biliary cancer patients treated with chemotherapy and anti-EGFR

Caterina Peraldo‐Neia, Giuliana Cavalloni, Elisabetta Fenocchio et al. · 2018 · PLoS ONE

The association of anti-EGFR to gemcitabine and oxaliplatin (GEMOX) chemotherapy did not improve survival in biliary tract carcinoma (BTC) patients. Multiple mechanisms might be involved in the resistance to anti-EGFR. Here, we explored the mutation profile of EGFR extracellular domain (ECD), of tyrosine kinase domain (TKD), and its amplification status. EGFR mutational status of exons 12, 18-21 was analyzed in 57 tumors by Sanger sequencing. EGFR amplification was evaluated in 37 tumors by Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization (FISH). Kaplan-Meier curves were calculated using the log-rank test. S

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessSocial Sciences

Fighting the spread of COVID-19 misinformation in Kyrgyzstan, India, and the United States: How replicable are accuracy nudge interventions?

Lyndsay Gavin, Jenna McChesney, Anson Tong et al. · 2022 · Technology Mind and Behavior

The spread of misinformation has generated confusion and uncertainty about how to behave with respect to protective actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as social distancing and getting vaccinated. garnered significant press…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation of the right anterior temporal lobe did not significantly affect verbal insight

Takatsugu Aihara, Takeshi OGAWA, Takeaki Shimokawa et al. · 2017 · PLoS ONE

Humans often utilize past experience to solve difficult problems. However, if past experience is insufficient to solve a problem, solvers may reach an impasse. Insight can be valuable for breaking an impasse, enabling the reinterpretation or re-representation of a problem. Previous studies using between-subjects designs have revealed a causal relationship between the anterior temporal lobes (ATLs) and non-verbal insight, by enhancing the right ATL while inhibiting the left ATL using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In addition, neuroimaging studies have reported a correlation be

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessPsychology

The effect of cognitive training in older adults: be aware of CRUNCH

Li Fu, Roy P. C. Kessels, Joseph H. R. Maes · 2020 · Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition

Cognitive training research has revealed support for both the magnification and compensation accounts, respectively predicting larger or smaller training benefits for individuals already having strong cognitive abilities. A recent study in…

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Replication FailureOpen accessPsychology

Mortality salience effects fail to replicate in traditional and novel measures

Bjørn Sætrevik, Hallgeir Sjåstad · 2022 · Meta-Psychology

Mortality salience (MS) effects, where death reminders lead to ingroup-bias and defensive protection of one’s world-view, have been claimed to be a fundamental human motivator. MS phenomena have ostensibly been identified in several hundred studies within the “terror management theory” framework, but transparent and high-powered replications are lacking. Experiment 1 (N = 101 Norwegian lab participants) aimed to replicate the traditional MSeffect on national patriotism, with additional novel measures of democratic values and pro-sociality. Experiment2 (N = 784 US online participants) aimed to

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Negative / Null Result Report

The Continuous Fragility Index of Statistically Significant Findings in Randomized Controlled Trials That Compare Interventions for Anterior Shoulder Instability

Mohammed Al-Asadi, Michelle Sherren, Hassaan Abdel Khalik et al. · 2024 · The American Journal of Sports Medicine

Background: Evidence-based care relies on robust research. The fragility index (FI) is used to assess the robustness of statistically significant findings in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). While the traditional FI is limited to…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Human metapneumovirus infection of organoid-derived human bronchial epithelium represents cell tropism and cytopathology as observed in in vivo models

Pau Ribó-Molina, Stefan van Nieuwkoop, Anna Z. Mykytyn et al. · 2024 · mSphere

ABSTRACT Human metapneumovirus (HMPV), a member of the Pneumoviridae family, causes upper and lower respiratory tract infections in humans. In vitro studies with HMPV have mostly been performed in monolayers of undifferentiated epithelial cells. In vivo studies in cynomolgus macaques and cotton rats have shown that ciliated epithelial cells are the main target of HMPV infection, but these observations cannot be studied in monolayer systems. Here, we established an organoid-derived bronchial culture model that allows physiologically relevant studies on HMPV. Inoculation with multiple prototype

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Residential Proximity to Major Roadways at Birth, DNA Methylation at Birth and Midchildhood, and Childhood Cognitive Test Scores: Project Viva(Massachusetts, USA)

Cheng Peng, Martijn den Dekker, Andrés Cárdenas et al. · 2018 · Environmental Health Perspectives

BACKGROUND: Epigenetic variability is hypothesized as a regulatory pathway through which prenatal exposures may influence child development and health. OBJECTIVE: We sought to examine the associations of residential proximity to roadways at birth and epigenome-wide DNA methylation. We also assessed associations of differential methylation with child cognitive outcomes. METHODS: We estimated residential proximity to roadways at birth using a geographic information system (GIS) and cord blood methylation using Illumina's HumanMethylation450-array in 482 mother-child pairs in Project Viva. We ide

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Negative / Null Result ReportBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

No Significant Effect of 7,8-Dihydroxyflavone on APP Processing and Alzheimer-Associated Phenotypes

Weitao Zhou, Xiaoyong Li, Daochao Huang et al. · 2015 · Current Alzheimer Research

It is reported that 7,8-dihydroxyflavone (DHF), a TrkB agonist, has beneficial effects on neuronal excitotoxicity, stroke, and Parkinson disease in animal models by enhancing axon regeneration, muscle reinnervation and neuromuscular…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessAgricultural and Biological Sciences

Intercropping changed the soil microbial community composition but no significant effect on alpha diversity

Jiaying Liu, Weixi Zhang, Chao Teng et al. · 2024 · Frontiers in Microbiology

Introduction: Enhancing the planning of the forest-agricultural composite model and increasing the efficiency with which forest land is utilized could benefit from a thorough understanding of the impacts of intercropping between forests and agriculture on soil physicochemical properties and microbial communities. Methods: intercrop soils, along with their corresponding monocrops, were used in this study's llumina high-throughput sequencing analysis to determine the composition and diversity of soil bacterial and fungal communities. Results: The findings indicated that intercropping considerabl

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