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Browse the failure-mode index

21,222 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 accessMedicine

A validation study of crescents in predicting ESRD in patients with IgA nephropathy

Xiaoyan Zhang, Sufang Shi, Yan Ouyang et al. · 2018 · Journal of Translational Medicine

BACKGROUND: A working group on the Oxford classification of IgA nephropathy (IgAN) recently reported that crescents detected in kidney tissue predicted a worse renal outcome. However, this finding must be validated in independent cohorts before it can be widely applied to clinical practice. METHODS: Biopsy-proven IgAN patients were continuously recruited from two large renal centers in China from 1989 to 2014. All patients were followed for more than 1 year unless end stage renal disease (ESRD) occurred within 12 months. Crescents were defined as focal cellular or fibrocellular crescent format

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessHealth Professions

Humans use multi-objective control to regulate lateral foot placement when walking

Jonathan B. Dingwell, Joseph P. Cusumano · 2019 · PLoS Computational Biology

A fundamental question in human motor neuroscience is to determine how the nervous system generates goal-directed movements despite inherent physiological noise and redundancy. Walking exhibits considerable variability and equifinality of task solutions. Existing models of bipedal walking do not yet achieve both continuous dynamic balance control and the equifinality of foot placement humans exhibit. Appropriate computational models are critical to disambiguate the numerous possibilities of how to regulate stepping movements to achieve different walking goals. Here, we extend a theoretical and

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEnvironmental Science

Lights Off, Lights On: The Effects of Electricity Shortages on Small Firms

Morgan Hardy, Jamie McCasland · 2019 · The World Bank Economic Review

Abstract Entrepreneurs in developing countries report that unreliable electricity imposes a serious constraint, yet little evidence exists on how blackouts impact the micro-firms that account for the majority of employment. This article…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessHealth Professions

Comparison of formula‐fed infants with and without colic revealed significant differences in total bacteria, Enterobacteriaceae and faecal ammonia

Francesco Savino, Andrea Quartieri, Angela De Marco et al. · 2016 · Acta Paediatrica

AIM: This study compared the faecal microbial composition of formula-fed infants who did and did not have colic. METHODS: Faecal samples from formula-fed infants under 16 weeks of age with (n = 38) and without (n = 39) colic were collected at Department of Pediatrics in Turin, Italy, between February 2014 and October 2015. The pH and faecal ammonia were determined and total bacteria, bifidobacteria, lactic acid bacteria and coliforms were quantified by fluorescent in situ hybridisation (FISH). RESULTS: Faecal ammonia was significantly higher in the colicky infants than in the controls (483 vs.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Integrative review of artificial intelligence applications in nursing: education, clinical practice, workload management, and professional perceptions

Rabie Adel El Arab, Omayma Abdulaziz Al Moosa, Mette Sagbakken et al. · 2025 · Frontiers in Public Health

Background: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the nursing profession, presenting significant opportunities and challenges. Despite its promising potential in enhancing nursing education, clinical practice, and operational efficiency, critical barriers related to ethics, workforce adaptation, and humanistic care persist. Aim: This integrative review systematically evaluates the integration of AI in nursing practice, with a specific focus on nursing education, clinical care, workload management, and professional perceptions. Methods: Guided by PRISMA 2020 and the SPIDER framew

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

The Impact of AI-Generated Instructional Videos on Problem-Based Learning in Science Teacher Education

Νικόλαος Πέλλας · 2025 · Education Sciences

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gained significant prominence in science education, yet its practical applications, particularly in teacher training, remain underexplored. Specifically, there is a lack of research on AI’s potential to support personalized professional development through automated analysis of classroom interactions and tailored feedback. As science teacher education requires skill development in complex scientific concepts within problem-based learning (PBL) contexts, there is a growing need for innovative, technology-driven instructional tools. AI-generated instructional vid

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Paediatric exercise immunology: Health and clinical applications

Brian W. Timmons · 2026 · PubMed

Considerable advances have been made in exercise immunology over the last two decades, and it is becoming evident that many of the health benefits of regular physical activity may be directly related to activation of the immune system. The…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Reliability of LLMs as medical assistants for the general public: a randomized preregistered study

Andrew M. Bean, Rebecca Payne, Guy Parsons et al. · 2026 · Nature Medicine

Global healthcare providers are exploring the use of large language models (LLMs) to provide medical advice to the public. LLMs now achieve nearly perfect scores on medical licensing exams, but this does not necessarily translate to accurate performance in real-world settings. We tested whether LLMs can assist members of the public in identifying underlying conditions and choosing a course of action (disposition) in ten medical scenarios in a controlled study with 1,298 participants. Participants were randomly assigned to receive assistance from an LLM (GPT-4o, Llama 3, Command R+) or a source

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Why the A/AN prediction effect may be hard to replicate: a rebuttal to Delong, Urbach, and Kutas (2017)

Aine Ito, Andrea E. Martin, Mante S. Nieuwland · 2017 · Language Cognition and Neuroscience

In our recent publication “How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects” (Ito, Martin, & Nieuwland, 2016a), we report two experiments which failed to replicate existing…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Genetic characterization of an insect-specific flavivirus isolated from Culex theileri mosquitoes collected in southern Portugal

Ricardo Parreira, Shelley Cook, Ângela Celis de Almeida Lopes et al. · 2012 · Virus Research

We describe the full genetic characterization of an insect-specific flavivirus (ISF) from Culex theileri (Theobald) mosquitoes collected in Portugal. This represents the first isolation and full characterization of an ISF from Portuguese mosquitoes. The virus, designated CTFV, for Culex theileri flavivirus, was isolated in the C6/36 Stegomyia albopicta (=Aedes albopictus) cell line, and failed to replicate in vertebrate (Vero) cells in common with other ISFs. The CTFV genome encodes a single polyprotein with 3357 residues showing all the features expected for those of flaviviruses. Phylogeneti

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Negative / Null Result Report

Extortion can outperform generosity in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma

Zhijian Wang, Yanran Zhou, Jaimie W. Lien et al. · 2016 · Nature Communications

Abstract Zero-determinant (ZD) strategies, as discovered by Press and Dyson, can enforce a linear relationship between a pair of players’ scores in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. Particularly, the extortionate ZD strategies can enforce…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Biochemical recurrence prediction after radiotherapy for prostate cancer with T2w magnetic resonance imaging radiomic features

Catarina Dinis Fernandes, Cuong V. Dinh, Iris Walraven et al. · 2018 · Physics and Imaging in Radiation Oncology

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: High-risk prostate cancer patients are frequently treated with external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT). Of all patients receiving EBRT, 15-35% will experience biochemical recurrence (BCR) within five years. Magnetic…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

A multi-site study on medical school selection, performance, motivation and engagement

Anouk Wouters, Gerda Croiset, Nienke R. Schripsema et al. · 2017 · Advances in Health Sciences Education

Medical schools seek ways to improve their admissions strategies, since the available methods prove to be suboptimal for selecting the best and most motivated students. In this multi-site cross-sectional questionnaire study, we examined the value of (different) selection procedures compared to a weighted lottery procedure, which includes direct admission based on top pre-university grade point averages (≥8 out of 10; top-pu-GPA). We also considered whether students had participated in selection, prior to being admitted through weighted lottery. Year-1 (pre-clinical) and Year-4 (clinical) stude

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Significant association of long non-coding RNAs HOTAIR genetic polymorphisms with cancer recurrence and patient survival in patients with uterine cervical cancer

Shun‐Long Weng, Wenjun Wu, Yi‐Hsuan Hsiao et al. · 2018 · International Journal of Medical Sciences

Up to date, no study explores the relationship of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of long non-coding RNAs HOTAIR (lncRNAs HOTAIR) with cancer recurrence and patient survival in uterine cervical cancer for Taiwanese women. We…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Performance of virtual screening against GPCR homology models: Impact of template selection and treatment of binding site plasticity

Mariama Jaiteh, Ismael Rodríguez‐Espigares, Jana Selent et al. · 2020 · PLoS Computational Biology

Rational drug design for G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) is limited by the small number of available atomic resolution structures. We assessed the use of homology modeling to predict the structures of two therapeutically relevant GPCRs and strategies to improve the performance of virtual screening against modeled binding sites. Homology models of the D2 dopamine (D2R) and serotonin 5-HT2A receptors (5-HT2AR) were generated based on crystal structures of 16 different GPCRs. Comparison of the homology models to D2R and 5-HT2AR crystal structures showed that accurate predictions could be obta

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessArts and Humanities

Observation, experimentation, and replication in linguistics

Jack Grieve · 2021 · Linguistics

Abstract In this paper, I propose that replication failure in linguistics may be due primarily to inherent issues with the application of experimental methods to analyze an inextricably social phenomenon like language, as opposed to poor…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Statistically significant features improve binary and multiple Motor Imagery task predictions from EEGs

Mürşide Değirmenci, Yılmaz Kemal Yüce, Matjaž Perc et al. · 2023 · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

In recent studies, in the field of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), researchers have focused on Motor Imagery tasks. Motor Imagery-based electroencephalogram (EEG) signals provide the interaction and communication between the paralyzed patients and the outside world for moving and controlling external devices such as wheelchair and moving cursors. However, current approaches in the Motor Imagery-BCI system design require effective feature extraction methods and classification algorithms to acquire discriminative features from EEG signals due to the non-linear and non-stationary structure of EEG

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeuroscience

Evaluating the replicability of the uncanny valley effect

Jussi Palomäki, Anton Kunnari, Marianna Drosinou et al. · 2018 · Heliyon

The uncanny valley (UV) effect refers to an eerie feeling of unfamiliarity people get while observing or interacting with robots that resemble humans almost but not quite perfectly. The effect is not well understood, and it is also unclear…

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Assessing Statistically Significant Heavy-Metal Concentrations in Abandoned Mine Areas via Hot Spot Analysis of Portable XRF Data

Sung-Min Kim, Yosoon Choi · 2017 · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

To develop appropriate measures to prevent soil contamination in abandoned mining areas, an understanding of the spatial variation of the potentially toxic trace elements (PTEs) in the soil is necessary. For the purpose of effective soil sampling, this study uses hot spot analysis, which calculates a z-score based on the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic to identify a statistically significant hot spot sample. To constitute a statistically significant hot spot, a feature with a high value should also be surrounded by other features with high values. Using relatively cost- and time-effective portable X-r

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Negative / Null Result ReportDecision Sciences

The fragility of statistically significant findings from randomised controlled trials in the urological literature

Vikram M. Narayan, Shreyas Gandhi, Kristin Chrouser et al. · 2018 · British Journal of Urology

OBJECTIVES: To use the Fragility Index to evaluate the robustness of statistically significant findings from urological randomised controlled trials (RCTs). MATERIALS AND METHODS: The 'Fragility Index' is defined as the minimum number of…

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Negative / Null Result ReportNeuroscience

Cathodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Children With Dystonia

Scott J. Young, Matteo Bertucco, Rebecca Sheehan-Stross et al. · 2012 · Journal of Child Neurology

Studies suggest that dystonia is associated with increased motor cortex excitability. Cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation can temporarily reduce motor cortex excitability. To test whether stimulation of the motor cortex can…

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