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19,885 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures · Negative / Null Result Report. 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 accessComputer Science

Efficient Reinforcement for Visual-Textual Thinking with Discrete Diffusion Model

Yoonjeon Kim, Yuhta Takida, Chieh-Hsin Lai et al. · 2026 · arXiv

RL-based post-training has been widely adopted to enable interleaved visual and textual reasoning in unified multimodal models capable of both text and image generation. However, most existing approaches are built upon autoregressive (AR) unified models, which require full image regeneration during visual reasoning. In this work, we demonstrate that multimodal discrete diffusion models are effective alternatives to AR models for reinforcement learning in interleaved reasoning, owing to their ability to perform efficient visual rollouts via localized visual editing rather than full image-token

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

The Trade-off Between Minimal Instability and Larger Improvements over Deferred Acceptance

Taylor Knipe, Josue Ortega · 2025 · arXiv

The celebrated Efficiency-Adjusted Deferred Acceptance mechanism (EADA) improves the efficiency of the DA algorithm via consented priority violations. Notwithstanding its many merits, we show that EADA can improve only two students when an alternative mechanism that Pareto-dominates DA could benefit all but one student. This shortfall in the number of students improved is not exclusive of EADA but extends to all setwise minimally unstable mechanisms, i.e. those that generate a set of blocking pairs that is never a strict superset of that of another mechanism. The incompatibility between number

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Negative result measurements in mesoscopic systems

S. A. Gurvitz · 2003 · arXiv

We investigate measurement of electron transport in quantum dot systems by using single-electron transistor as a noninvasive detector. It is demonstrated that such a detector can operate in the ``negative-result measurement'' regime. In this case the measured current is not distorted, providing that it is a non-coherent one. For a coherent transport, however, the possibility of observing a particular state out of coherent superposition leads to distortion of a measured current even in the ``negative-result measurement'' regime. The corresponding decoherence rate is obtained in the framework of

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Disposition Distillation at Small Scale: A Three-Arc Negative Result

Hari Sadasivan · 2026 · arXiv

We set out to train behavioral dispositions (self-verification, uncertainty acknowledgment, feedback integration) into small language models (0.6B to 2.3B effective parameters) through a four-stage all-MIT distillation pipeline, with follow-on experiments on inference-time attention-head interventions and a frozen-base confidence-gated sidecar. An internal draft reported +33.9-point MCAS and +15.3-point HumanEval gains on a Qwen3-0.6B student; a second-pass sanity check falsified both numbers before publication. The HumanEval delta was a truncation artifact (n_predict=512) that inverted to -8.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Negative results for approximation using single layer and multilayer feedforward neural networks

J. M. Almira, P. E. Lopez-de-Teruel, D. J. Romero-Lopez et al. · 2018 · arXiv

We prove a negative result for the approximation of functions defined on compact subsets of $\mathbb{R}^d$ (where $d \geq 2$) using feedforward neural networks with one hidden layer and arbitrary continuous activation function. In a nutshell, this result claims the existence of target functions that are as difficult to approximate using these neural networks as one may want. We also demonstrate an analogous result (for general $d \in \mathbb{N}$) for neural networks with an \emph{arbitrary} number of hidden layers, for activation functions that are either rational functions or continuous splin

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

On the negative-result experiments in quantum mechanics

Kenichi Konishi · 2023 · arXiv

We comment on the so-called negative-result experiments (also known as null measurements, interaction-free measurements, and so on) in quantum mechanics (QM), in the light of the new general understanding of the quantum-measurement processes, proposed recently. All experiments of this kind (null-measurements) can be understood as improper measurements with an intentionally biased detector set up, which introduces exclusion or selection of certain events. The prediction on the state of a microscopic system under study based on a null measurement, is sometimes dramatically described as ``wave-fu

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

A Negative Result on Cross-Model Activation Transfer in a Pythia Multi-Hop Setting

Peiyan Zhang, Jason Xin · 2026 · arXiv

Recent work shows that language models can transmit behavioural traits through hidden signals in generated data during training. We ask whether a different activation-mediated channel is viable: can one language model communicate a useful intermediate reasoning state to another at inference time through a post-hoc linear activation bridge, rather than through a textual or structured-token relay? We test this question in a controlled Pythia-160M to Pythia-410M multi-hop reasoning setting. A linear translation layer learns a strong normalized-space map between sender and receiver hidden states,

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Distilling Self-Consistency into Verbal Confidence: A Pre-Registered Negative Result and Post-Hoc Rescue on Gemma 3 4B

Jon-Paul Cacioli · 2026 · arXiv

Small instruct-tuned LLMs produce degenerate verbal confidence under minimal elicitation: ceiling rates above 95%, near-chance Type-2 AUROC, and Invalid validity profiles. We test whether confidence-conditioned supervised fine-tuning (CSFT) with self-consistency-derived targets can close the gap between internal information and verbal readout. A pre-registered Phase 0 protocol on Gemma 3 4B-it with a modal filter restricting training to items with correct modal answers produced a negative result: AUROC2 dropped from 0.554 to 0.509 due to label-entropy collapse in the training targets. An explo

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Differentiable Energy-Based Regularization in GANs: A Simulator-Based Exploration of VQE-Inspired Auxiliary Losses

David Strnadel · 2025 · arXiv

This paper presents an exploratory, simulator-based proof of concept investigating whether differentiable energy terms derived from parameterized quantum circuits can serve as auxiliary regularization signals in Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). We augment the Auxiliary Classifier GAN (ACGAN) generator objective with a Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE)-inspired energy term computed from class-specific Ising Hamiltonians using Qiskit's EstimatorQNN and TorchConnector. All experiments are performed on a noiseless statevector simulator with only four qubits, using a deliberately simple

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Pac-learning Recursive Logic Programs: Negative Results

W. W. Cohen · 1995 · arXiv

In a companion paper it was shown that the class of constant-depth determinate k-ary recursive clauses is efficiently learnable. In this paper we present negative results showing that any natural generalization of this class is hard to learn in Valiant's model of pac-learnability. In particular, we show that the following program classes are cryptographically hard to learn: programs with an unbounded number of constant-depth linear recursive clauses; programs with one constant-depth determinate clause containing an unbounded number of recursive calls; and programs with one linear recursive cla

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Negative Results for Software Effort Estimation

Tim Menzies, Ye Yang, George Mathew et al. · 2016 · arXiv

Context:More than half the literature on software effort estimation (SEE) focuses on comparisons of new estimation methods. Surprisingly, there are no studies comparing state of the art latest methods with decades-old approaches. Objective:To check if new SEE methods generated better estimates than older methods. Method: Firstly, collect effort estimation methods ranging from "classical" COCOMO (parametric estimation over a pre-determined set of attributes) to "modern" (reasoning via analogy using spectral-based clustering plus instance and feature selection, and a recent "baseline method" pro

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Persuasive Dialogue Understanding: the Baselines and Negative Results

Hui Chen, Deepanway Ghosal, Navonil Majumder et al. · 2020 · arXiv

Persuasion aims at forming one's opinion and action via a series of persuasive messages containing persuader's strategies. Due to its potential application in persuasive dialogue systems, the task of persuasive strategy recognition has gained much attention lately. Previous methods on user intent recognition in dialogue systems adopt recurrent neural network (RNN) or convolutional neural network (CNN) to model context in conversational history, neglecting the tactic history and intra-speaker relation. In this paper, we demonstrate the limitations of a Transformer-based approach coupled with Co

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

New Perspectives on the Polyak Stepsize: Surrogate Functions and Negative Results

Francesco Orabona, Ryan D'Orazio · 2025 · arXiv

The Polyak stepsize has been proven to be a fundamental stepsize in convex optimization, giving near optimal gradient descent rates across a wide range of assumptions. The universality of the Polyak stepsize has also inspired many stochastic variants, with theoretical guarantees and strong empirical performance. Despite the many theoretical results, our understanding of the convergence properties and shortcomings of the Polyak stepsize or its variants is both incomplete and fractured across different analyses. We propose a new, unified, and simple perspective for the Polyak stepsize and its va

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Optimizing Matrices For Compressed Sensing Using Existing Goodness Measures: Negative Results, And An Alternative

Alankar Kotwal, Ajit Rajwade · 2017 · arXiv

The bound that arises out of sparse recovery analysis in compressed sensing involves input signal sparsity and some property of the sensing matrix. An effort has therefore been made in the literature to optimize sensing matrices for optimal recovery using this property. We discover, in the specific case of optimizing codes for the CACTI camera, that the popular method of mutual coherence minimization does not produce optimal results: codes designed to optimize effective dictionary coherence often perform worse than random codes in terms of mean squared reconstruction error. This surprising phe

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Classical tests of multidimensional gravity: negative result

Maxim Eingorn, Alexander Zhuk · 2010 · arXiv

In Kaluza-Klein model with toroidal extra dimensions, we obtain the metric coefficients in a weak-field approximation for delta-shaped matter sources. These metric coefficients are applied to calculate the formulas for frequency shift, perihelion shift, deflection of light and parameterized post-Newtonian (PPN) parameters. In the leading order of approximation, the formula for frequency shift coincides with well-known general relativity expression. However, for perihelion shift, light deflection and PPN parameter $γ$ we obtain formulas $Dπr_g/[(D-2)a(1-e^2)]$, $(D-1)r_g/[(D-2)ρ]$ and $1/(D-2)$

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Constructible sets in lattice-valued models: A negative result

Jose Moncayo, Pedro H. Zambrano · 2023 · arXiv

We investigate different set-theoretic constructions in Residuated Logic based on Fitting's work on Intuitionistic Set Theory. We start by stating some results concerning constructible sets within valued models of Set Theory. We present two distinct constructions of the constructible universe: $\mathfrak{L}^{\mathbb{Q}}$ and $\mathbb{L}^{\mathbb{Q}}$, and show that they are isomorphic to V (the classical von Neumann universe) and L (the classical Gödel constructible universe), respectively. Even though lattice-valued models are the natural way to study non-classical Set Theory (e.g., Intuition

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

A Negative Result on Gradient Matching for Selective Backprop

Lukas Balles, Cedric Archambeau, Giovanni Zappella · 2023 · arXiv

With increasing scale in model and dataset size, the training of deep neural networks becomes a massive computational burden. One approach to speed up the training process is Selective Backprop. For this approach, we perform a forward pass to obtain a loss value for each data point in a minibatch. The backward pass is then restricted to a subset of that minibatch, prioritizing high-loss examples. We build on this approach, but seek to improve the subset selection mechanism by choosing the (weighted) subset which best matches the mean gradient over the entire minibatch. We use the gradients w.r

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Simple negative result for physically universal controllers with macroscopic interface

Dominik Janzing · 2018 · arXiv

To study potential limitations of controllability of physical systems I have earlier proposed physically universal cellular automata and Hamiltonians. These are translation invariant interactions for which any control operation on a finite target region can be implemented by the autonomous time evolution if the complement of the target region is 'programmed' to an appropriate initial state. This provides a model of control where the cut between a system and its controller can be consistently shifted, in analogy to the Heisenberg cut defining the boundary between a quantum system and its measur

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

A negative result on algebraic specifications of the meadow of rational numbers

Jan A. Bergstra, Inge Bethke · 2015 · arXiv

$\mathbb{Q}_0$ - the involutive meadow of the rational numbers - is the field of the rational numbers where the multiplicative inverse operation is made total by imposing $0^{-1}=0$. In this note, we prove that $\mathbb{Q}_0$ cannot be specified by the usual axioms for meadows augmented by a finite set of axioms of the form $(1+ \cdots +1+x^2)\cdot (1+ \cdots +1 +x^2)^{-1}=1$.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Negative result about the construction of genuinely entangled subspaces from unextendible product bases

Maciej Demianowicz · 2022 · arXiv

Unextendible product bases (UPBs) provide a versatile tool with various applications across different areas of quantum information theory. Their comprehensive characterization is thus of great importance and has been a subject of vital interest for over two decades now. An open question asks about the existence of UPBs, which are genuinely unextendible, i.e., they are not extendible even with biproduct vectors. In other words, the problem is to verify whether there exist genuinely entangled subspaces (GESs), subspaces composed solely of genuinely multiparty entangled states, complementary to U

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

A negative result on regularity estimates on finite radial Morse index solutions to elliptic problems

J. Silverio Martinez-Baena, Salvador Villegas · 2024 · arXiv

In the regularity theory of solutions to elliptic partial differential equations often the concept of stability plays the role of a sufficient condition for smoothness. It is a natural question to ask if this holds true for nonstable but finite Morse index solutions. We provide a negative answer showing the existence of sequences of solutions with radial Morse index equal to 1 for which regularity estimates can not be satisfied.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Phase-Localized Curation Does Not Help: A Negative Result on Per-Phase Metric Selection for Demonstration Filtering

Aarav Bedi · 2026 · arXiv

Manipulation demonstrations have temporal phase structure, and a natural hypothesis is that demonstration-curation metrics should be applied within phases rather than globally. The idea is to segment each trajectory into phases, score each phase with the metric that is locally most informative, and then aggregate. This follows directly from prior work showing that a single global metric can be the best detector of a defect and yet the worst curator of the resulting policy. We test the per-phase hypothesis on three contact-rich LIBERO pick-and-place tasks with a controlled early-release structu

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

When Skills Don't Help: A Negative Result on Procedural Knowledge for Tool-Grounded Agents in Offensive Cybersecurity

Samuel Jacob Chacko, James Hugglestone, Chashi Mahiul Islam et al. · 2026 · arXiv

Agent Skills, structured packages of procedural knowledge loaded into an LLM agent at inference time, are widely reported to improve task pass rates by an average of 16.2~percentage points across diverse domains. Yet the same benchmarks show wide variance, with 16 of 84 tasks suffering negative deltas when Skills are introduced. The community has not yet articulated a clean mechanism for \emph{when} Skills help and when they are merely redundant overhead. We re-analyze a recently published 180-run controlled study of an MCP-grounded autonomous Capture-the-Flag (CTF) agent under four documentat

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

On negative results concerning Hardy means

Paweł Pasteczka · 2013 · arXiv

In the present paper we are going to prove some necessary condition for a mean to be Hardy. This condition is then applied to completely characterize the Hardy property among the Gini means.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

On negative results concerning weak-Hardy means

Paweł Pasteczka · 2021 · arXiv

We establish the test which allows to show that a mean does not admit a weak-Hardy property. As a result we prove that Hardy and weak-Hardy properties are equivalent in the class of homogeneous, symmetric, repetition invariant, and Jensen concave mean on $\mathbb{R}_+$. More precisely, for every mean $\mathscr{M} \colon \bigcup_{n=1}^\infty \mathbb{R}_+^n \to \mathbb{R}$ as above, the inequality $$\mathscr{M}(a_1)+\mathscr{M}(a_1,a_2)+\dots<\infty$$ holds for all $a \in \ell^1(\mathbb{R}_+)$ if and only if there exists a positive, real constant $C$ (depending only on $\mathscr{M}$) such that $

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

What killed the Convex Booster ?

Yishay Mansour, Richard Nock, Robert C. Williamson · 2022 · arXiv

A landmark negative result of Long and Servedio established a worst-case spectacular failure of a supervised learning trio (loss, algorithm, model) otherwise praised for its high precision machinery. Hundreds of papers followed up on the two suspected culprits: the loss (for being convex) and/or the algorithm (for fitting a classical boosting blueprint). Here, we call to the half-century+ founding theory of losses for class probability estimation (properness), an extension of Long and Servedio's results and a new general boosting algorithm to demonstrate that the real culprit in their specific

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Demystifying Lipschitz verification: positive matrices, negative results

Simon Kuang, Yuezhu Xu, S. Sivaranjani et al. · 2026 · arXiv

The global Lipschitz constant of a neural network is related to robustness and generalization, yet unlike in many classical models, it is not plainly legible from the parameters. This has motivated sophisticated verification algorithms, especially semidefinite programming (SDP) based on incremental quadratic constraints on the activation functions, to improve on the fast but often loose product of layerwise Lipschitz constants (the trivial bound). We ask why Lipschitz verification is a problem in the first place. Our answer is that the difficulty is structural: estimating a network's Lipschitz

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Surprising Negative Results for Generative Adversarial Tree Search

Kamyar Azizzadenesheli, Brandon Yang, Weitang Liu et al. · 2018 · arXiv

While many recent advances in deep reinforcement learning (RL) rely on model-free methods, model-based approaches remain an alluring prospect for their potential to exploit unsupervised data to learn environment model. In this work, we provide an extensive study on the design of deep generative models for RL environments and propose a sample efficient and robust method to learn the model of Atari environments. We deploy this model and propose generative adversarial tree search (GATS) a deep RL algorithm that learns the environment model and implements Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) on the lear

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