A searchable index of real negative results, null findings, and replication failures from the published literature — so you can learn what didn't work before repeating it.
WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record (title, authors, DOI) compiled from open scholarly databases, with the abstract shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed (e.g. Creative Commons); otherwise a short excerpt is shown for reference under fair use. WASTE classifies each work by failure type; classifications are automated and approximate.
20233 results in Negative / Null Result Report · page 310 of 675
Hoth KF, Voorhies K, Wu AC et al. · 2022 · Journal of psychiatry and brain science
Depression is the most common mental illness in the U.S. affecting nearly 40 million adults age 18 years and older. Depression has both genetic and environmental influences. In addition, women are more likely to be affected by depression…
Fang J, Cao Y, Ni J · 2023 · Preprint
Background: Intracranial aneurysm (IA) accounts for a substantial source of non-traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage, with inflammation postulated as a potential factor in its pathogenesis. The present study aims at evaluating the association…
Davis CN, Jinwala Z, Justice AC et al. · 2025 · Alcohol, clinical & experimental research
Background Topiramate reduces alcohol consumption in individuals who drink heavily. Candidate gene studies aimed at identifying genetic variants that predict topiramate's effects on drinking have yielded inconsistent findings. To identify…
Ruuskanen V, Hagen T, Espeseth T et al. · 2024 · Journal of cognition
Over the past few years, several studies have explored the relationship between resting-state baseline pupil size and cognitive abilities, including fluid intelligence, working memory capacity, and attentional control. However, the results…
Baldé AM, Schellenberg EG, Lima CF · 2026 · Psychonomic bulletin & review
Why does musical expertise predict enhanced emotion recognition in speech prosody? Evidence for a causal role of music training is weak, and correlations with musical aptitude could reflect basic auditory abilities rather than musicality…
Morriss J, Lee CE, Wood A et al. · 2023 · Preprint
Background and Objectives: Attentional biases to negative information are often observed in emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression. Recently, Fergus et al. (2013) demonstrated that participants scoring high in Intolerance of…
Beckner AG, Voss AT, Phillips L et al. · 2023 · Infant behavior & development
Two experiments were conducted to examine mental rotation in 6- to 12-month-old infants (N = 166) using a change detection task. These experiments were replications of Lauer and Lourenco (Lauer et al., 2015; Lauer & Lourenco, 2016), using…
Bartsch LM, Musfeld P · 2023 · Preprint
The covert retrieval model (McCabe, 2008) postulates, that delayed memory performance is enhanced when the encoding of memoranda in WM is interrupted by distraction. When subjects are asked to remember stimuli for an immediate memory test,…
Lucchi F, Lloyd B, Nieuwenhuis S · 2023 · Preprint
Background The vagus nerve is thought to be involved in the allostatic regulation of motivation and energy metabolism via gut-brain interactions. A recent study by Neuser and colleagues [1] provided novel evidence for this process in…
Abad-Malo D, Alvarado-Cando O, Karsilar H · 2025 · Journal of eye movement research
Our interaction with the world depends on our ability to process temporal information, which is a key component of human cognition that directly impacts decision-making, planning, and prediction of events. Visual information plays a…
Lorente P, Ruuskanen V, Mathôt S et al. · 2025 · Psychonomic bulletin & review
Recent studies have investigated resting-state, or baseline, pupil size as a general measure of cognitive abilities, based on the earlier finding that larger pupils might be predictive of higher general intelligence or working memory…
Van der Burg E, Jertberg RM, Geurts HM et al. · 2026 · Translational psychiatry
Traditional subjective measures are limited in the insight they provide into underlying behavioral differences associated with autism and, accordingly, their ability to predict diagnosis. Performance-based measures offer an attractive…
Ashburn-Nardo L, Moss-Racusin CA, Smith JL et al. · 2022 · Frontiers in psychology
The reproducibility movement in psychology has resulted in numerous highly publicized instances of replication failures. The goal of the present work was to investigate people's reactions to a psychology replication failure vs. success,…
Mura F, Catrambone V, Valenza G et al. · 2026 · Biological psychiatry global open science
Background Various cognitive and emotional factors shape our perception of time. Notably, individuals experiencing depressive symptoms often report changes in their time perception, characterized by a phenomenon termed depressive time…
Hawkes JA, Flygare AD, Moodie LWK et al. · 2025 · Analytical chemistry
Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is one of the most complex chemical mixtures known, with its chemical composition having long puzzled biogeochemists. Identifying the chemical structures within DOM is essential for unraveling its origins and…
Galvin HR, Boffo M, Snippe L et al. · 2023 · Addictive behaviors
Evidence for approach bias tendencies to underly automatic behavioural impulses towards seeking out gambling activities in the presence of appetitive salient cues was first shown by Boffo et al. (2018) in a Dutch sample. Relative to…
Hashemi Tayer A, Shokoohi G · 2026 · Iranian journal of microbiology
Background and objectives Umbilical cord blood-derived platelet gel (CBPG) is rich in growth factors (GFs) and antimicrobial peptides. This study evaluated its in vitro antibacterial and antifungal activity against dominant nosocomial…
Landolt MA, Strebel NL, Moehrlen U et al. · 2026 · Epigenetics
Fetal repair of spina bifida aperta (fSBA) is an established intervention that improves neurological and neurodevelopmental outcomes. The present exploratory study examines whether molecular signatures related to stress regulation are…
Stump K, Morar H, Talsania A et al. · 2026 · Hand (New York, N.Y.)
Background Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) use has demonstrated positive effects on bone metabolism and pseudoarthrosis following fusion surgery. There is, however, little evidence regarding the preoperative use of…
Ricketts W, Hartshorne JK · 2022 · Preprint
We replicated Experiment 3 of Finn & Hudson Kam (2008) The curse of knowledge: First language knowledge impairs adult learners' use of novel statistics for word segmentation, Cognition, 108(2), 477-499. This is part of a larger project…
Ricketts W, Hartshorne JK · 2022 · Preprint
We replicated Experiment 1 of Finn & Hudson Kam (2008) The curse of knowledge: First language knowledge impairs adult learners’ use of novel statistics for word segmentation, Cognition, 108(2), 477-499. This is part of a larger project…
Matziorinis AM, Gaser C, Koelsch S · 2022 · Preprint
Music-making and engagement in music-related activities have shown procognitive benefits for healthy and pathological populations, suggesting reductions in brain aging. A previous brain aging study, using Brain Age Gap Estimation…
Egeskov-Cavling AM, van Wijhe M, Yakimov V et al. · 2024 · The Journal of infectious diseases
Background Worldwide, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections are among the most common causes of infant hospitalization. Host genetic factors influencing the risk and severity of RSV infection are not well known. Methods We conducted…
Tan E, Williams HC · 2026 · American journal of clinical dermatology
Nicotinamide has been widely promoted as a low-cost safe chemopreventive agent against non-melanoma skin cancer. A recent large retrospective study of more than 33,000 US veterans reported a 14% reduction in overall skin cancer risk and a…
IJzerman H, Denissen JJA · 2022 · Preprint
Liu, Wang, and Van Lange (2022) have published a study that “replicated earlier findings that prosociality was associated with a greater level of secure attachment and a lower level of avoidant attachment” and that “prosociality was…
Lien MC, Ruthruff E · 2023 · Journal of cognition
There is emerging evidence that suppressing distractors occur to prevent capture by those distractors. Theeuwes (2022) claimed that the absence of capture is not because of suppression but rather because a difficult, serial search causes…
Mochizuki M · 2022 · Cognitive processing
The QWERTY effect is a phenomenon in which words typed with more characters from the right side (everything to the right of T, G, and B) of a standard keyboard (i.e. QWERTY keyboard) are evaluated as having a higher valence or a more…
Famularo RL, Aboelata A, Schatz T et al. · 2026 · Developmental science
Human newborns are able to discriminate between certain languages but not others. This ability has long been attributed to sensitivity to rhythm-the temporal regularities in speech of different languages. Here, we demonstrate through a…
Warman A, Clark A, Malcolm GL et al. · 2024 · Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)
It's been repeatedly shown that pictures of graspable objects can facilitate visual processing, even in the absence of reach-to-grasp actions, an effect often attributed to the concept of affordances. A classic demonstration of this is the…
Ruuskanen V, Hagen T, Espeseth T et al. · 2023 · Preprint
Over the past few years, several studies have explored the relationship between resting-state baseline pupil size and cognitive abilities, including fluid intelligence, working memory capacity, and attentional control. However, the results…