Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessEcology
Ally M. Whiteis, Shadi Fathollahifard, Isabela Suaza‐Sierra et al. · 2026 · Ecology and Evolution
ABSTRACT Warmer epilimnetic water temperatures and reduced dissolved oxygen levels in deeper water are common stressors for fishes in freshwater reservoirs throughout the summer. We investigated the effects of a temperature–oxygen squeeze—a phenomenon that squeezes fish into a narrow, livable zone—on striped bass from 1995 to 2020 in Lake Texoma. This reservoir is located on the border of Texas and Oklahoma, possesses one of the largest self‐sustaining populations of inland freshwater striped bass in the US, and is of high economic importance to the region. We used a trait‐based approach to qu
View details →DOI: 10.1002/ece3.73736 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPublic aspects of medicine
Simiao Chen, Pascal Geldsetzer, Till Bärnighausen · 2020 · SSM: Population Health
Population aging in middle-income countries, including China, has resulted in strong economic incentives to increase the retirement age. These economic incentives should be weighed up against the effects of later retirement on physical and mental health and wellbeing. We aimed to determine the causal effect of retirement on perceived stress, an important measure of mental well-being. We used data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey in 2015 and adopted a non-parametric regression discontinuity design (RDD) to measure the causal effect of retirement on stress. Stress was assessed using th
View details →DOI: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100462 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Daniel Selechnik, Andrea J. West, Gregory P. Brown et al. · 2017 · PeerJ
The cane toad (Rhinella marina) has undergone rapid evolution during its invasion of tropical Australia. Toads from invasion front populations (in Western Australia) have been reported to exhibit a stronger baseline phagocytic immune response than do conspecifics from range core populations (in Queensland). To explore this difference, we injected wild-caught toads from both areas with the experimental antigen lipopolysaccharide (LPS, to mimic bacterial infection) and measured whole-blood phagocytosis. Because the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is stimulated by infection (and may influence
View details →DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3856 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Rachel Cassar, Victor Shiramizu, Lisa M DeBruine et al. · 2020 · PLoS ONE
Women's preferences for masculine characteristics in men's faces have been extensively studied. By contrast, little is known about how gay men respond to masculine facial characteristics. One area of disagreement in the emerging literature on this topic is the association between gay men's partnership status and masculinity preference. One study found that partnered gay men showed stronger preferences for masculine faces than did single gay men, while another study found that partnered gay men showed weaker preferences for masculine faces than did single gay men. We re-examined this issue in a
View details →DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229133 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessScience
Leonor Neves, Marta Martins, Ana Isabel Correia et al. · 2021 · Royal Society Open Science
The human voice is a primary channel for emotional communication. It is often presumed that being able to recognize vocal emotions is important for everyday socio-emotional functioning, but evidence for this assumption remains scarce. Here, we examined relationships between vocal emotion recognition and socio-emotional adjustment in children. The sample included 141 6- to 8-year-old children, and the emotion tasks required them to categorize five emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, plus neutrality), as conveyed by two types of vocal emotional cues: speech prosody and non-verbal
View details →DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211412 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessScience
John P. McElderry, Tongwu Zhang, Wei Zhao et al. · 2025 · Nature Communications
Abstract In spite of the growing interest in the microbiome in human cancer, there are currently only small-scale lung cancer microbiome studies conducted directly on tissue. As part of the Sherlock-Lung study, we studied the microbiomes of 940 lung cancers (4090 samples) in never smokers (LCINS) directly from lung tissue using three data types: 16S rRNA gene sequencing (16S), whole-genome sequencing (WGS) with paired blood, and RNA-seq. We observe very low biomass and few microbiome associations in LCINS using 16S and WGS tissue. Using RNA-seq, we observe more total microbial reads, and decre
View details →DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-66780-y Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Fernando Caravaggio, Pontus Plavén-Sigray, Granville James Matheson et al. · 2018 · PLoS ONE
High levels of trait impulsivity are considered a risk factor for substance abuse and drug addiction. We recently found that non-planning trait impulsivity was negatively correlated with post-commissural putamen volumes in men, but not women, using the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP). Here, we attempted to replicate this finding in an independent sample using an updated version of the KSP: the Swedish Universities Scales of Personality (SSP). Data from 88 healthy male participants (Mean Age: 28.16±3.34), who provided structural T1-weighted magnetic resonance images (MRIs) and self-repor
View details →DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209584 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMaterials of engineering and construction. Mechanics of materials
Thomas L. Goût, Anamul H. Mir, Simon M. Fairclough et al. · 2024 · npj Materials Degradation
Abstract Zirconolite ceramics present a chemically durable host matrix for waste actinides, but zirconolite dissolution rates reported in the literature often vary significantly. Here, the release of Ca and Al from a hot isostatically pressed zirconolite (Ca0.8Zr0.9Ce0.3Ti1.6Al0.4O7.0) was shown to be predominantly driven by preferential dissolution of minor perovskite and alumina phases. Both phases were undetectable by XRD, and the perovskite was difficult to detect by SEM-EDS. Whilst the zirconolite phase exhibited no signs of alteration, dissolution of the perovskite proceeded congruently
View details →DOI: 10.1038/s41529-024-00475-5 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
N. Mahfouz, J. Mülmenstädt, S. Burrows · 2024 · Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Cloud albedo susceptibility to droplet number perturbation remains a source of uncertainty in understanding aerosol–cloud interactions and thus both past and present climate states. Through the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) v2 experiments, we probe the effects of competing processes on cloud albedo susceptibility of low-lying marine stratocumulus in the northeast Pacific. In present-day conditions, we find that increasing precipitation suppression by aerosols increases cloud albedo susceptibility, whereas increasing cloud sedimentation decreases it. By constructing a hypothetical m
View details →DOI: 10.5194/acp-24-7253-2024 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessBusiness
Farhad Rahmanov, Anar Azizov , Elnara Samedova et al. · 2026 · Knowledge & Performance Management
Type of the article: Research Article Whether national artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem development shapes tourism’s contribution to GDP is an open empirical question, particularly given the multidimensional nature of modern AI ecosystems and the heterogeneous reliance of countries on tourism. This study identifies which dimensions of national AI ecosystem development drive within-country changes in tourism’s direct GDP share, using panel data from 33 countries over 2017–2023. Fixed-effects estimation with clustered standard errors is applied to both the composite Stanford HAI AI Vibranc
View details →DOI: 10.21511/kpm.10(2).2026.06 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Olivier Senn, Florian Hoesl, Toni Amadeus Bechtold et al. · 2024 · PLoS ONE
There is a broad consensus in groove research that the experience of groove, understood as a pleasurable urge to move in response to music, is to some extent related to the complexity of the rhythm. Specifically, music with medium rhythmic complexity has been found to motivate greater urge to move compared to low or high complexity music (inverted-U hypothesis). Studies that confirmed the inverted-U hypothesis usually based their measure of complexity on the rhythmic phenomenon of syncopation, where rhythms with more and/or stronger syncopation are considered to be more complex than less synco
View details →DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0311877 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Seref Can Gurel, Seref Can Gurel, Seref Can Gurel et al. · 2018 · Frontiers in Neuroscience
The frontal eye fields (FEFs) are core nodes of the oculomotor system contributing to saccade planning, control, and execution. Here, we aimed to reveal hemispheric asymmetries between left and right FEF in both voluntary and reflexive saccades toward horizontal and vertical targets. To this end, we applied fMRI-guided continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over either left or right FEF and assessed the consequences of this disruption on saccade latencies. Using a fully counterbalanced within-subject design, we measured saccade latencies before and after the application of cTBS in eighteen
View details →DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2018.00944 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Lou qian Zhang, Jian nong Zhou, Jun Wang et al. · 2012 · PLoS ONE
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: N-Acetyltransferase (NAT) 2 is an important enzyme involved in the metabolism of different xenobiotics, including potential carcinogens, whose phenotypes were reported to be related to individual susceptibility to colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the results remain conflicting. To assess the relationship between NAT2 phenotypes and CRC risk, we performed this meta-analysis. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was conducted to identify all case-control or cohort studies of NAT2 acetylator status on the susceptibility of CRC by searching of PubMed and EMBASE, u
View details →DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0032425 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessChiropractic
M. John Petrozzi, Grace Spencer, Martin G. Mackey · 2021 · Chiropractic & Manual Therapies
Abstract Background In chronic conditions, such as back pain, the use of interventions that address physical, social and psychological aspects within a biopsychosocial framework are encouraged, however, applying this holistic multimodal approach in physical therapy practice (i.e., chiropractic and physiotherapy) is challenging. To explore the problem of delivering a biopsychosocially informed package of care in physical therapy practice a recent randomised control trial (RCT) called ‘Mind Your Back’ was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a combined physical and internet-delivered psych
View details →DOI: 10.1186/s12998-021-00389-y Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPolitical science (General)
Baowen Liang · 2026 · Politics and Governance
Generalized trust refers to individuals’ trust in members of society at large. Previous research highlights negativity bias as a central obstacle to trust development: trust is easily destroyed but difficult to build. Yet, most evidence for this bias comes from Western, individualistic contexts. This study examines whether such findings generalize to collectivist settings. Using a preregistered online experiment in China, I show that negative information about others’ untrustworthiness lowers generalized trust more than positive information raises it, which indicates a clear negativity bias in
View details →DOI: 10.17645/pag.11609 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Gabriel Gaudencio Rêgo, Óscar F. Gonçalves, Paulo Sérgio Boggio · 2022 · Scientific Reports
Abstract Neurofeedback and transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) are promising techniques for neuroenhancement of attentional performance. As far as we know no study compared both techniques on attentional performance in healthy participants. We compared tDCS and neurofeedback in a randomized, single-blind, controlled experiment assessing both behavioral (accuracy and time reaction) and electrophysiological (N1, P1, and P3 components) data of participants responding to the Attention Network Task (ANT). Eighty volunteers volunteered for this study. We adopted standard protocols for bot
View details →DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-22245-6 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessSpecial aspects of education
Alistair McInerny, Andrew Boudreaux, Mila Kryjevskaia · 2025 · Physical Review Physics Education Research
This article reports on a controlled study to investigate the efficacy of incorporating explicit discussions about the duality of human reasoning and its implications for learning in physics instruction. The central goal is to probe to what extent, if at all, such discussions improve student performance on tasks that tend to elicit intuitively appealing but incorrect responses. We hypothesized that explicitly discussing the reasoning pathways and hazards associated with the interactions between automatic process 1 and deliberate process 2 could boost students’ performance on a variety of topic
View details →DOI: 10.1103/physrevphyseducres.21.010135 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPolitical science (General)
Jason M. Pudlo · Politics and Religion
Houses of worship are often shelters after the storm. Yet, as climate change fuels natural disasters and communities increasingly rely on congregations during disaster recovery, are houses of worship ready to be houses of refuge? Examining clergy influence, does a higher concern about climate change by clergy result in improved congregational disaster readiness? Data for the study come from a 2019 nationwide survey of clergy. The survey includes measures of congregational disaster preparedness along with one of the first applications of the SASSY climate concern measure to clergy. Results show
View details →DOI: 10.1017/s1755048325000082 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Rogier A. Kievit, Delia Fuhrmann, Gesa Sophia Borgeest et al. · 2018 · Wellcome Open Research
Background: Fluid intelligence declines with advancing age, starting in early adulthood. Within-subject declines in fluid intelligence are highly correlated with contemporaneous declines in the ability to live and function independently. To support healthy aging, the mechanisms underlying these declines need to be better understood. Methods: In this pre-registered analysis, we applied latent growth curve modelling to investigate the neural determinants of longitudinal changes in fluid intelligence across three time points in 185,317 individuals (N=9,719 two waves, N=870 three waves) from the U
View details →DOI: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.14241.2 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessNeurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Sebastian Baecke, Ralf Lützkendorf, Johannes Bernarding · 2026 · Brain Sciences
Background: The efficacy of real-time fMRI neurofeedback (NFB) depends critically on how feedback is presented and perceived by the participant. Although various visual feedback designs are used in practice, there is limited evidence on the impact of modality on learning and performance. We conducted a feasibility study to compare the effectiveness of different feedback modalities, and to evaluate the technical performance of NFB across two scanner field strengths. Methods: In a single-session study, nine healthy adults (6 men, 3 women) voluntarily adapted the activation level of the primary s
View details →DOI: 10.3390/brainsci16020166 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Hannah A Edwards, Gabriela K Hajduk, Gillian Durieux et al. · 2015 · PLoS ONE
Consistency of between-individual differences in behaviour or personality is a phenomenon in populations that can have ecological consequences and evolutionary potential. One way that behaviour can evolve is to have a genetic basis. Identifying the molecular genetic basis of personality could therefore provide insight into how and why such variation is maintained, particularly in natural populations. Previously identified candidate genes for personality in birds include the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4), and serotonin transporter (SERT). Studies of wild bird populations have shown that explorato
View details →DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0138439 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessLanguage and Literature
Matt Hunt Gardner, Xinyu Leslie Liao · 2026 · Language and Cognition
Using 3,154 tokens from American English, we test whether optionality in verb–particle placement increases speech-planning cost, measured as pre-verbal silence. Tokens were coded for object properties, idiomaticity and verb frequency. We find that pre-verbal silence does not differ between split (pick the book up) and joined (pick up the book) orders. While idiomaticity favours the joined order, it does not raise planning cost. Verb frequency shortens pauses only in fast speech, suggesting predictability acts lexically, not structurally. Choice symmetry does not lengthen pauses. We therefore f
View details →DOI: 10.1017/langcog.2026.10081 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Philipp Schoenegger, Miguel Costa-Gomes · 2022 · PLoS ONE
Charities differ, among other things, alongside the likelihood that their interventions succeed and produce the desired outcomes and alongside the extent that such likelihood can even be articulated numerically. In this paper, we investigate what best explains charitable giving behaviour regarding charities that have interventions that will succeed with a quantifiable and high probability (sure-thing charities) and charities that have interventions that only have a small and hard to quantify probability of bringing about the desired end (probabilistic charities). We study individual difference
View details →DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273971 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics
Martin Tajmar, Lance L. Williams · 2020 · Physics
Kaluza was the first to realize that the four-dimensional gravitational field of general relativity and the classical electromagnetic field behave as if they were components of a five-dimensional gravitational field. We present a novel experimental test of the macroscopic classical interpretation of the Kaluza fifth dimension. Our experiment design probes a key feature of Kaluza unification—that electric charge is identified with motion in the fifth dimension. Therefore, we tested for a time dilation effect on an electrically charged clock. This test can also be understood as a constraint on t
View details →DOI: 10.3390/physics2040033 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessSocial sciences (General)
Martijn van der Meer · 2025 · Journal of Trial and Error
Expert endorsement seems a promising tool in countering vaccine hesitancy. Yet findings from an experiment in the United Kingdom, published in this journal, found that repeated expert‐backed “debunking” messages had little effect on vaccination intentions or behaviors. At the same time, a similar study in Italy had earlier observed a slight increase in the intent to vaccinate—despite actual uptake remaining unchanged. In this article, I reflect on the differences between these studies and argue for a situated public health approach: one that opens up on diversity and responds to local trust dy
View details →DOI: 10.36850/dfab-4bcf Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessScience
Tianhao Liu, Katharina Rolfs, Isaac Fan et al. · 2021 · New Journal of Physics
By measuring the spin precession frequencies of polarized ^129 Xe and ^3 He, a new upper limit on the ^129 Xe atomic electric dipole moment (EDM) ${d}_{\text{A}}\left({}^{129}\mathrm{X}\mathrm{e}\right)$ was reported in Sachdev et al (2019 Phys. Rev. Lett. 123 , 143003). Here, we propose a new evaluation method based on global phase fitting (GPF) for analyzing the continuous phase development of the ^3 He– ^129 Xe comagnetometer signal. The Cramer–Rao lower bound on the ^129 Xe EDM for the GPF method is theoretically derived and shows the potential benefit of our new approach. The robustness o
View details →DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/ac09ca Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine
Rogier A. Kievit, Delia Fuhrmann, Gesa Sophia Borgeest et al. · 2018 · Wellcome Open Research
Background: Fluid intelligence declines with advancing age, starting in early adulthood. Within-subject declines in fluid intelligence are highly correlated with contemporaneous declines in the ability to live and function independently. To support healthy aging, the mechanisms underlying these declines need to be better understood. Methods: In this pre-registered analysis, we applied latent growth curve modelling to investigate the neural determinants of longitudinal changes in fluid intelligence across three time points in 185,317 individuals (N=9,719 two waves, N=870 three waves) from the U
View details →DOI: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.14241.1 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEducation
Nicole Shechtman, Jeremy Roschelle, Mingyu Feng et al. · 2019 · AERA Open
The Math Curriculum Impact Study was a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) to test the efficacy of a digital core curriculum for Grade 5 mathematics. Reasoning Mind’s Grade 5 Common Core Curriculum was a comprehensive, adaptive, blended learning approach that schools in the treatment group implemented for an entire school year. Schools in the control group implemented their business-as-usual mathematics curriculum. The study was completed in 46 schools throughout West Virginia, resulting in achievement data from 1,919 students. It also included exploratory investigations of teacher p
View details →DOI: 10.1177/2332858419850482 Negative / Null Result ReportMedicine
Chen X, Wen W, Zheng L · 2026 · Shock (Augusta, Ga.)
Background Sepsis is a clinical syndrome marked by a dysregulated host response to infection, impairing oxygen delivery and utilization and causing organ dysfunction. Hypoxemia, which can cause significant tissue and organ damage, commonly…
View details →DOI: 10.1097/shk.0000000000002865 Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMedicine (General)
Hiroyuki Masaoka, Keitaro Matsuo, Isao Oze et al. · 2020 · Journal of Epidemiology
Background: The association of alcohol drinking with bladder cancer risk remains unclear in East Asian populations. Aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2) enzyme oxidizes alcohol-metabolized carcinogenic acetaldehyde into acetate. It is well known that the inactive ALDH2 carriers, specific to East Asian populations, have an increased risk of several cancer types because of increased exposure to acetaldehyde after alcohol consumption. The aim of this study was to examine the association between alcohol drinking and bladder cancer risk using data from ten population-based prospective cohort studies in
View details →DOI: 10.2188/jea.je20190014 