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.
19866 results in Negative / Null Result Report · page 394 of 663
Liu Y, Lin H, Yu D et al. · 2026 · Ecology and evolution
Serotiny, a key fire-adaptive trait, enables certain plants to retain seeds in closed cones until triggered by fire, thus facilitating post-fire regeneration. Although serotiny has been observed in many species, the physiological and…
McManus F, Pranata A, Simpson JA et al. · 2025 · International journal of sports physical therapy
Background/purpose Chronic low back pain affects how individuals bend. Whether pain self-efficacy, a term describing one's confidence in their ability to perform activities despite experiencing pain, affects how much people with chronic…
Headrick KC, Pellegrini BA, Santiago EM et al. · 2026 · AoB PLANTS
Herbivory is particularly threatening to young plants that lack the resources needed to survive an attack. Seeds and seedlings should thus benefit greatly from using pre-attack cues to induce defence before damage. Locomotion mucus from…
Schiff KJ, Schiff DS, Moy BJ et al. · 2025 · PNAS nexus
Does the implementation of external oversight in policing improve public perceptions of police legitimacy? Civilian review boards (CRBs) are frequently promoted as mechanisms to enhance the legitimacy of police agencies by providing…
Li J, Jin T, Chi Y et al. · 2025 · Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment
Purpose Reducing electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)'s cognitive burden without compromising efficacy is critical. Although magnetic seizure therapy (MST) shows comparable symptom remission in schizophrenia, its neuroanatomical…
Lee P, Li J, Rafiee Y et al. · 2025 · Scientific reports
Facial attractiveness influences important social outcomes and most studies investigating possible predictors of facial attractiveness have tested for effects of shape symmetry, averageness (i.e., the converse of distinctiveness), and…
Torres-Banduc MA, Thapa RK, Pérez MA et al. · 2025 · Shoulder & elbow
Background The isokinetic shoulder profile is commonly used to assess injury risk in overhead sports. CrossFit athletes are vulnerable to shoulder injuries due to high-load, high-repetition demands. This exploratory study aimed to evaluate…
Potter CE, Lew-Williams C · 2025 · Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland)
It is a widely held belief that bilingual infants benefit from hearing each of their languages spoken by different people, as speakers could serve as a cue for separating the two languages. However, it is not yet known whether infants…
Vilotijević A, Mathôt S · 2024 · Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
In brightness, the pupil constricts, while in darkness, the pupil dilates; this is known as the pupillary light response (PLR). The PLR is driven by all photoreceptors: rods and cones, which contribute to image-forming vision, and…
Foulds C, Khudiakova V, Surtees ADR · 2026 · Scientific reports
Theory of mind is an important skill to function in society. There is evidence that anxiety can impair the ability to use this skill effectively; however, current research is inconclusive, uses heterogeneous measures of theory of mind, and…
Niu D, Ye L, Gu X et al. · 2026 · Diabetology & metabolic syndrome
BACKGROUND: Although serum bilirubin levels have been linked to diabetic retinopathy (DR), their causal role remains uncertain. We aimed to assess the relationship between bilirubin levels and diabetic retinopathy (DR) using both…
Zhang Z, Lian H, Huang L et al. · 2026 · International journal of surgery (London, England)
Background Sublobar resection, including wedge resection (WR) and segmental resection (SR) has been considered for early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the optimal sublobar approach continues to be a subject of…
Ostrega J, Shiramizu V, Lee AJ et al. · 2024 · Scientific reports
Vocal attractiveness influences important social outcomes. While most research on the acoustic parameters that influence vocal attractiveness has focused on the possible roles of sexually dimorphic characteristics of voices, such as…
Schauer G, Grassi PR, Gharabaghi A et al. · 2024 · Neuroscience of consciousness
The role of the parietal cortex in perceptual awareness and in resolving perceptual ambiguity is unsettled. Early influential transcranial magnetic stimulation studies have revealed differences in conscious perception following parietal…
Friehs MA, Brauner L, Frings C · 2021 · Experimental brain research
Stopping an already initiated action is crucial for human everyday behavior and empirical evidence points toward the prefrontal cortex playing a key role in response inhibition. Two regions that have been consistently implicated in…
Lazic A, Thomsen MR, Brown CC et al. · 2025 · Preventive medicine reports
Objective The Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides access to nutritional resources to low-income children starting at birth through enrollment in kindergarten or turning five years old. The…
Liu S, Nolin DA, Kitts JA · 2024 · Social networks
Recent studies have found order effects in social network data collection, where later names on a roster receive fewer nominations. Some thus argue for randomizing name orders or sampling peer names for survey rosters. We model order…
Fohrmann D, Schaffarczyk M, Menge C et al. · 2026 · Sports medicine - open
Background Advanced footwear technology (AFT) can enhance long-distance running performance by improving running economy (RE). However, the range of the individual improvements is large. Different intra-individual responses in running…
Shi P, Wei G, Li Z et al. · 2026 · Brain and behavior
Background Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) is a ubiquitous protozoan parasite capable of establishing lifelong latent infections in the central nervous system. Previous epidemiological studies have suggested a potential association between…
Wang A, Bao X, Wang C et al. · 2025 · Frontiers in neuroscience
Objective To investigate the changes in the global attributes of structural connectivity (SC) and functional connectivity (FC) graph theory, as well as the coupling topological structure of the whole brain SC-FC in patients with…
Soh CH, Nerlekar N, Whitmore K et al. · 2026 · American journal of preventive cardiology
Background Multiple cardiovascular (CV) risk assessment scores can predict CV events. The current trend towards assessing atheroma has led to these scores being used to identify patients who might benefit from coronary plaque imaging.…
Zeng YF, Wei XY, Wang QG et al. · 2025 · BMJ open
Objective The causal relationship between sleep characteristics and aortic aneurysm and dissection (AAD) is little known. Methods In this two-sample Mendelian randomisation (MR) study, we selected seven sleep-related traits (sleep…
Nguyen HM, Le DHH, Ho TTH et al. · 2026 · The application of clinical genetics
Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) poses a significant health burden in Vietnam. The TNF-α rs1800629 (-308G/A) polymorphism is an influential factor in disease pathogenesis. However, its association is inconsistent…
Hrnčíř V, Sheehan O, Claessens S et al. · 2026 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Humans have been using psychoactive substances for millennia, despite their potential negative health and social consequences. According to some scholars, our craving for mind-altering drugs is an evolutionary mistake-a hijacking of our…
Ling W, Li H, Liu L et al. · 2025 · Open heart
Objective To evaluate the association between β-blocker use and all-cause mortality in a real-world cohort of patients with myocardial infarction (MI). Methods This study included 2308 patients with MI from the National Health and…
Yoshikawa N, Masaki H · 2021 · Frontiers in psychology
Previous studies have shown that viewing cute pictures leads to performance improvement in a subsequent fine motor task. We examined the beneficial effects of viewing cute pictures in a more complex sporting skill (i.e., basketball free…
Orr SL, Hershey AD, Kurowski BG et al. · 2026 · Neurology. Genetics
Background and objectives To examine the association between genetic risk of migraine and post-traumatic headache (PTH) in children. Methods This is a secondary analysis of a cohort study that recruited children aged 8-17 years within 48…
Cheng T, Zhang HY, Wang TR et al. · 2025 · Scientific reports
This study uses Mendelian randomization (MR) to investigate the potential causal relationships between viral infections, including Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), SARS-CoV-2, cytomegalovirus (CMV), human…
Wehrman J · 2020 · Attention, perception & psychophysics
The oddball duration illusion describes how a rare or nonrepeated stimulus is perceived as lasting longer than a common or repeated stimulus. It has been argued that the oddball duration illusion could emerge because of an earlier…
Garfield V, Fatih N, Rentsch CT et al. · 2025 · Preprint
Previous research suggests that HbA 1c and diabetes are unlikely to be causally related to brain health and dementia outcomes. With the availability of better genetic instruments for additional glycaemic-related markers (i.e., insulin…