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Failure-mode index

Search what already failed

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.

21290 results · page 319 of 710

Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

Newborn Auditory Brainstem Response and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Maylott SE, Zeng G, Leung TS et al. · 2025 · Journal of neuroscience research

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)-the sudden and unexplained death of a seemingly healthy infant, < 1 year old-may be associated with abnormalities in the brain regions that underlie breathing and arousal during sleep. While post-mortem…

View details →DOI: 10.1002/jnr.70083
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine

Shedding light on public perceptions of scientists who engage in wrongness admission amidst a failed replication.

Evans ND, Fetterman AK · 2026 · Public understanding of science (Bristol, England)

Admitting that one's research findings are wrong involves admitting a potential instance of incompetence, which can keep scientists from engaging in wrongness admission. However, wrongness admission can yield favorable perceptions. In five…

View details →DOI: 10.1177/09636625251372820
Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

Towards distinguishing intra-canal and paraspinal cavitation activity during focused ultrasound exposures in the spine.

Frizado AP, O'Reilly MA · 2025 · Physics in medicine and biology

Objective. Although less established than transcranial focused ultrasound (FUS), transvertebral FUS is being developed to treat spinal cord pathologies. Transvertebral sonication of the spinal cord for microbubble-mediated drug delivery…

View details →DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/ae0f36
Negative / Null Result Report

Ptbp1 is not required for retinal neurogenesis and cell fate specification

Appel H, Carmen-Orozco RP, Santiago CP et al. · 2025 · Preprint

The RNA-binding protein Ptbp1 has been proposed as a master regulator of neuronal fate, repressing neurogenesis through its effects on alternative splicing and miRNA maturation. While prior studies using RNA interference suggested that…

View details →DOI: 10.1101/2025.07.02.662808
Negative / Null Result Report

Non-enzymatic isothermal strand displacement and amplification (NISDA) does not enable sensitive nucleic acid quantification

Van der Snickt T, Ailliet S, Bassini S et al. · 2025 · Preprint

Enzyme-free isothermal amplification methods offer a promising alternative to enzymatic assays for nucleic acid detection, particularly in low-resource settings. The nonenzymatic isothermal strand displacement and amplification (NISDA)…

View details →DOI: 10.1101/2025.05.19.654176
Negative / Null Result Report

Metascientific replication project with the advanced meta-experimental protocol of the transparent psi project procedures for testing the precognitive effect claimed by Bem

Walleczek J, von Stillfried N, Schmidt S et al. · 2025 · Preprint

This metascientific project studied the replicability of Bem Experiment 1, which had claimed a precognitive effect, i.e., the ability to successfully guess the outcome of future random events (Bem. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011;100: 407-25).…

View details →DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/53ckh_v1
Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

Exploring a novel method for inoculation to experimentally induce digital dermatitis in dairy calves.

Petersen Dias A, Orsel K, Gammariello CS et al. · 2025 · Research in veterinary science

Digital dermatitis (DD) is a polymicrobial, multifactorial hoof disorder with an undefined etiology, and existing animal models fail to induce a fast, standardized infection in bovine skin. This study explored bacterial inoculation methods…

View details →DOI: 10.1016/j.rvsc.2025.105794
Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

Preregistered Direct Replication and Extension of "The Wisdom to Know the Difference: Strategy-Situation Fit in Emotion Regulation in Daily Life Is Associated With Well-Being".

Willroth EC, Young G, Ford BQ et al. · 2025 · Psychological science

Certain emotion-regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal) are associated with better well-being and are therefore seen as adaptive (health-promoting) strategies. However, it is unlikely that any strategy is adaptive regardless of context.…

View details →DOI: 10.1177/09567976251335567
Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

A Multidimensional Preclinical Investigation of the Biogenic Amine Depletion and Subchronic Swim Models of Fibromyalgia.

Argenbright CM, Scully IF, Flores D et al. · 2025 · The journal of pain

Pain is a multidimensional phenomenon, encompassing affective-motivational, cognitive-evaluative, and sensory-discriminative domains. Understanding these components is crucial for effective diagnosis and management, particularly in…

View details →DOI: 10.1016/j.jpain.2025.105486
Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

Multimodal assessments of therapist characteristics are largely unrelated to patient outcomes: A preregistered analysis.

Goldberg SB, Baldwin SA, Flynn AWP et al. · 2026 · Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science

While it is known that therapists vary in effectiveness, it is unclear what therapist-level characteristics predict this variation. We conducted a large-scale, preregistered study ( n = 97 therapists from the United States and Canada, n =…

View details →DOI: 10.1177/21677026261424222
Negative / Null Result Report

Re-examining the effect of inoculation messages on anti-vaccine conspiracy attitudes: A conceptual replication of Banas et al (2023)

Adinugroho I, Bentall R, Stafford T · 2025 · Preprint

This is the first study to attempt replication of Banas et al (2023) on inoculation messages. The original experiment demonstrated that inoculation messages could stimulate resistance to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. However, a gap was…

View details →DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/d3x9p_v1
Negative / Null Result Report

From “Bob/Kirk” to “Błażej/Piotrek” Effect – Replication of Social Bias Effect Towards People Whose Names Match Their Faces

Stawiany K, Kozak K, Sokołowska Z · 2025 · Preprint

The study explores the hypothesis that individuals show greater sympathy towards coherent name-face pairs compared to incoherent pairs, replicating the effect observed by Barton and Halberstadt. A structured questionnaire was designed…

View details →DOI: 10.20944/preprints202501.0057.v1
Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

Biodegradable mesh implants for prolapse repair: Advances in computational modelling and experimental validation.

Vaz F, Silva T, Silva E et al. · 2025 · Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Part H, Journal of engineering in medicine

Pelvic organ prolapse (POP) limits people's quality of life and is quite common in women, especially with advancing age. As cases increase, there is an urgent need for alternative treatments, especially for severe POP, where options remain…

View details →DOI: 10.1177/09544119251323336
Negative / Null Result Report

Is mental effort exertion contagious? A replication study

Mazza A, Voorrips E, Hughes G et al. · 2024 · Preprint

Daily, we perform activities in the presence of others (e.g., office work). While it's well-established that the mere presence of others can influence our performance, it is less clear whether others' performance, rather than just their…

View details →DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/fgcu6
Negative / Null Result Report

Belief change and the concept of Free Will

Tavernier N, Wisniewski D, Brass M · 2024 · Preprint

Over the last 15 years, researchers in psychology asserted that manipulating laypeople’s free will beliefs (FWB) has an impact on various downstream social behaviors (such as cheating). More recently, however, many of these findings failed…

View details →DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/sh2mr
Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

Influence of rhythmic contexts on perception: No behavioral and eye-tracker evidence for rhythmic entrainment.

Román-Caballero R, Martín-Arévalo E, Martín-Sánchez PDC et al. · 2024 · Consciousness and cognition

Entrainment theories propose that attention inherently oscillates between moments of attentional enhancement and disengagement. Consequently, perceptual and response benefits have been reported in tasks with a rhythmic structure. In the…

View details →DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2024.103789
Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

Using a naive Bayesian approach to identify academic risk based on multiple sources: A conceptual replication.

Oddleifson C, Kilgus S, Klingbeil DA et al. · 2025 · Journal of school psychology

The purpose of this study was to conduct a conceptual replication of Pendergast et al.'s (2018) study that examined the diagnostic accuracy of a nomogram procedure, also known as a naive Bayesian approach. The specific naive Bayesian…

View details →DOI: 10.1016/j.jsp.2024.101397
Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine

No transfer of 3D-Multiple Object Tracking training on game performance in soccer: A follow-up study.

Romeas T, Goujat M, Faubert J et al. · 2025 · Psychology of sport and exercise

The impact of domain-general cognitive 'brain' training on improving sports performance is highly debated. This study sought to follow-up on research that showcased the benefits of perceptual-cognitive 3D-Multiple Object Tracking (3D-MOT)…

View details →DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2024.102770
Negative / Null Result Report

Influence of rhythmic contexts on perception: No behavioral and eye-tracker evidence for rhythmic entrainment

Román-Caballero R, Martín-Arévalo E, Martín-Sánchez PdC et al. · 2024 · Preprint

Entrainment theories propose that attention inherently oscillates between moments of attentional enhancement and disengagement. Consequently, perceptual and response benefits have been reported in tasks with a rhythmic structure. In the…

View details →DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/vt6zy
Negative / Null Result Report

Modulating the value of positive feedback does not influence expectation change in major depression – What can be learned from a failed replication?

Houben M, Rief W, Gärtner T et al. · 2024 · Preprint

Abstract Background: Depression is related to a reduced update of negative expectations in response to positive information. Here, we aimed to replicate that cognitive immunization (a cognitive devaluation of expectation-disconfirming…

View details →DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-4819708/v1
Negative / Null Result Report

Musical training does not enhance neural sound encoding at early stages of the auditory system: A large-scale multisite investigation

Whiteford KL, Baltzell LS, Chiu M et al. · 2024 · Preprint

Musical training has been associated with enhanced neural processing of sounds, as measured via the frequency following response (FFR), implying the potential for human subcortical neural plasticity. We conducted a large-scale multi-site…

View details →DOI: 10.1101/2024.09.02.610856