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Browse the failure-mode index

21,733 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 accessMathematics

Non-colliding billiards in the plane

Itai Benjamini, Alexander Shamov, Barak Weiss · 2026 · arXiv

We present an open problem about non-colliding freely moving hard disks in the Euclidean plane, together with related positive and negative partial results. The open problem is stated in a non-degenerate form: velocities are required to be pairwise distinct and their speeds are required to be uniformly bounded away from infinity. The positive deterministic result gives a bounded, injective, non-colliding velocity assignment for the integer lattice; after a common velocity shift, the speeds are also bounded away from zero. The negative result shows that no bounded continuous vector field on the

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Classical Simulation of Non-Classical Systems: A Large Deviation Analysis

Adam Brandenburger, Pierfrancesco La Mura · 2025 · arXiv

Any quasi-probability representation of a no-signaling system -- including quantum systems -- can be simulated via a purely classical scheme by allowing signed events and a cancellation procedure. This raises a fundamental question: What properties of the non-classical system does such a classical simulation fail to replicate? We answer by using large deviation theory to show that the probability of a large fluctuation under the classical simulation can be strictly greater than under the actual non-classical system. The key finding driving our result is that negativity in probability relaxes t

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

CogniPlay: a work-in-progress Human-like model for General Game Playing

Aloïs Rautureau, Éric Piette · 2025 · arXiv

While AI systems have equaled or surpassed human performance in a wide variety of games such as Chess, Go, or Dota 2, describing these systems as truly "human-like" remains far-fetched. Despite their success, they fail to replicate the pattern-based, intuitive decision-making processes observed in human cognition. This paper presents an overview of findings from cognitive psychology and previous efforts to model human-like behavior in artificial agents, discusses their applicability to General Game Playing (GGP) and introduces our work-in-progress model based on these observations: CogniPlay.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Bias and response heterogeneity in an air quality data set

S. Stanley Young, Robert L. Obenchain, Christophe Lambert · 2015 · arXiv

It is well-known that claims coming from observational studies often fail to replicate when rigorously re-tested. The technical problems include multiple testing, multiple modeling and bias. Any or all of these problems can give rise to claims that will fail to replicate. There is a need for statistical methods that are easily applied, are easy to understand, and are likely to give reliable results. In particular, simple ways for reducing the influence of bias are essential. In this paper, the Local Control method developed by Robert Obenchain is explicated using a small air quality/longevity

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Negative / Null Result Report

Failure to replicate the Aubert-Fleischl effect

Björn Jörges, Laurence R. Harris · 2025 · PLOS One

For many years the accepted wisdom in vision science has been that humans tend to underestimate the speed of an object when they pursue it with their gaze in comparison to when they fixate a spot in the visual scene and the object moves…

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Negative / Null Result Report

Can Public Information Replicate Institutional Bond Price Vendors?

Erik Huesca Burela · 2026 · Revista Mexicana de Economía y Finanzas

This paper aims to determine whether a transparent, vendor-style bond pricing framework built exclusively from public information can match the pricing accuracy of institutional vendors. The methodology constructs Treasury-based yield…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

3D Simulations of Plasma Filaments in the Scrape Off Layer: A Comparison with Models of Reduced Dimensionality

Luke Easy, Fulvio Militello, John Omotani et al. · 2014 · arXiv

This paper presents simulations of isolated 3D filaments in a slab geometry obtained using a 3D reduced fluid code. First, systematic scans were performed to investigate how the dynamics of a filament are affected by its amplitude, perpendicular size and parallel extent. The perpendicular size of the filament was found to have a strong influence on its motions, as it determined the relative importance of parallel currents to polarisation and viscous currents, whilst drift-wave instabilities were observed if the initial amplitude of the blob was increased sufficiently. Next, the 3D simulations

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Abandoned Hypothesis

Another Failed Modal Collapse Argument

William Vincent · 2026 · Analysis

Abstract The doctrine of divine simplicity says that God is not composed of parts (physical or metaphysical). Modal collapse arguments aim to show that the necessary co-existence of God and creation follows from the doctrine. As noted by…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Resonant amplitude distribution of the Hilda asteroids and the free-floating planet flyby scenario

Jian Li, Zhihong Jeff Xia, Hanlun Lei et al. · 2024 · arXiv

In some recent work, we provided a quantitative explanation for the number asymmetry of Jupiter Trojans by hypothesizing a free-floating planet (FFP) flyby into the Solar System. In support of that explanation, this paper examines the influence of the same FFP flyby on the Hilda asteroids, which orbit stably in the 3:2 mean motion resonance with Jupiter. The observed Hilda population exhibits two distinct resonant patterns: (1) a lack of Hildas with resonant amplitudes < 40 deg. at eccentricities < 0.1; (2) a nearly complete absence of Hildas with amplitudes < 20 deg., regardless of eccentrici

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Negative / Null Result Report

The Effect of Variety on Perceived Quantity

Lukas Röseler, Georg Felser, Jana Asberger et al. · 2024 · Meta-Psychology

Redden and Hoch (2009) found that variety in a set of items robustly decreased the perceived quantity of the sum of these items across multiple studies. For example, a set of multicolored M&M’s was estimated to contain fewer M&M’s than an…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Augmenting Immersive Telepresence Experience with a Virtual Body

Nikunj Arora, Markku Suomalainen, Matti Pouke et al. · 2022 · arXiv

We propose augmenting immersive telepresence by adding a virtual body, representing the user's own arm motions, as realized through a head-mounted display and a 360-degree camera. Previous research has shown the effectiveness of having a virtual body in simulated environments; however, research on whether seeing one's own virtual arms increases presence or preference for the user in an immersive telepresence setup is limited. We conducted a study where a host introduced a research lab while participants wore a head-mounted display which allowed them to be telepresent at the host's physical loc

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Can Large Language Models (LLMs) Describe Pictures Like Children? A Comparative Corpus Study

Hanna Woloszyn, Benjamin Gagl · 2025 · arXiv

The role of large language models (LLMs) in education is increasing, yet little attention has been paid to whether LLM-generated text resembles child language. This study evaluates how LLMs replicate child-like language by comparing LLM-generated texts to a collection of German children's descriptions of picture stories. We generated two LLM-based corpora using the same picture stories and two prompt types: zero-shot and few-shot prompts specifying a general age from the children corpus. We conducted a comparative analysis across psycholinguistic text properties, including word frequency, lexi

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Abandoned Hypothesis

The Linear Non-Threshold Hypothesis-A Failed Concept

Joseph Bevelacqua · 2024 · Qeios

The linear non-threshold (LNT) hypothesis is based on the premise that the smallest amount of ionizing radiation produces a biological detriment. It implies that exposure to low-dose radiation be minimized. The LNT approach causes fear and…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

A Robot by Any Other Frame: Framing and Behaviour Influence Mind Perception in Virtual but not Real-World Environments

Sebastian Wallkotter, Rebecca Stower, Arvid Kappas et al. · 2020 · arXiv

Mind perception in robots has been an understudied construct in human-robot interaction (HRI) compared to similar concepts such as anthropomorphism and the intentional stance. In a series of three experiments, we identify two factors that could potentially influence mind perception and moral concern in robots: how the robot is introduced (framing), and how the robot acts (social behaviour). In the first two online experiments, we show that both framing and behaviour independently influence participants' mind perception. However, when we combined both variables in the following real-world exper

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Time to adjust: Improving replicability in experimental psychology by adjustment for evident selective inference

Yoav Zeevi, Sofi Astashenko, Liad Mudrik et al. · 2020 · arXiv

The field of psychological sciences has been grappling with the replicability crisis. Various issues have been identified as potential sources of this problem. We bring to light a potential source that has largely been overlooked and demonstrate its significant contribution to the problem: the practice of multiple comparisons. We analyzed 88 papers from the Reproducibility Project in Psychology and found that multiple results are commonly reported in a single paper, ranging from 4 to 730 (M=77.7), without multiple comparison adjustments. We retroactively applied such an adjustment using a hier

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Affine term structure models : a time-changed approach with perfect fit to market curves

Cheikh Mbaye, Frédéric Vrins · 2019 · arXiv

We address the so-called calibration problem which consists of fitting in a tractable way a given model to a specified term structure like, e.g., yield or default probability curves. Time-homogeneous jump-diffusions like Vasicek or Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (possibly coupled with compounded Poisson jumps, JCIR), are tractable processes but have limited flexibility; they fail to replicate actual market curves. The deterministic shift extension of the latter (Hull-White or JCIR++) is a simple but yet efficient solution that is widely used by both academics and practitioners. However, the shift approach

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