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Failure-mode index

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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.

20261 results in Negative / Null Result Report · page 631 of 676

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Assessing Vibrational Frequencies of CO Adsorbed on Cerium Oxide Surfaces Using SCAN and r2SCAN Functionals

Alexander Contreras-Payares, Pablo G. Lustemberg, M. Verónica Ganduglia-Pirovano · 2025 · arXiv

The vibrational frequency of carbon monoxide (CO) adsorbed on ceria-based catalysts serves as a sensitive probe for identifying exposed surface facets, provided that experimental reference data on well-defined single-crystal surfaces and reliable theoretical assignments are available. Previous studies have shown that the hybrid DFT approach using the HSE06 functional yields good agreement with experimental observations, whereas the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) with PBE+U does not. In this work, we assess the performance of different exchange-correlation functionals by comparing the

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Hidden Meanings in Plain Sight: RebusBench for Evaluating Cognitive Visual Reasoning

Seyed Amir Kasaei, Arash Marioriyad, Mahbod Khaleti et al. · 2026 · arXiv

Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have achieved remarkable proficiency in explicit visual recognition, effectively describing what is directly visible in an image. However, a critical cognitive gap emerges when the visual input serves only as a clue rather than the answer. We identify that current models struggle with the complex, multi-step reasoning required to solve problems where information is not explicitly depicted. Successfully solving a rebus puzzle requires a distinct cognitive workflow: the model must extract visual and textual attributes, retrieve linguistic prior knowledge (suc

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Spin-statistics relation for quantum Hall states

Alberto Nardin, Eddy Ardonne, Leonardo Mazza · 2022 · arXiv

We prove a generic spin-statistics relation for the fractional quasiparticles that appear in abelian quantum Hall states on the disk. The proof is based on an efficient way for computing the Berry phase acquired by a generic quasiparticle translated in the plane along a circular path, and on the crucial fact that once the gauge-invariant generator of rotations is projected onto a Landau level, it fractionalizes among the quasiparticles and the edge. Using these results we define a measurable quasiparticle fractional spin that satisfies the spin-statistics relation. As an application, we predic

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

When Medical Imaging Met Self-Attention: A Love Story That Didn't Quite Work Out

Tristan Piater, Niklas Penzel, Gideon Stein et al. · 2024 · arXiv

A substantial body of research has focused on developing systems that assist medical professionals during labor-intensive early screening processes, many based on convolutional deep-learning architectures. Recently, multiple studies explored the application of so-called self-attention mechanisms in the vision domain. These studies often report empirical improvements over fully convolutional approaches on various datasets and tasks. To evaluate this trend for medical imaging, we extend two widely adopted convolutional architectures with different self-attention variants on two different medical

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Benchmarking Language Model Creativity: A Case Study on Code Generation

Yining Lu, Dixuan Wang, Tianjian Li et al. · 2024 · arXiv

As LLMs become increasingly prevalent, it is interesting to consider how ``creative'' these models can be. From cognitive science, creativity consists of at least two key characteristics: \emph{convergent} thinking (purposefulness to achieve a given goal) and \emph{divergent} thinking (adaptability to explore new environments or constraints) \citep{runco2003critical}. In this work, we introduce a framework for quantifying LLM creativity that incorporates the two design ingredients: (1) We introduce DENIAL PROMPTING which pushes LLMs to develop more creative solutions to a given problem by incr

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Association Is Not Similarity: Learning Corpus-Specific Associations for Multi-Hop Retrieval

Jason Dury · 2026 · arXiv

Dense retrieval systems rank passages by embedding similarity to a query, but multi-hop questions require passages that are associatively related through shared reasoning chains. We introduce Association-Augmented Retrieval (AAR), a lightweight transductive reranking method that trains a small MLP (4.2M parameters) to learn associative relationships between passages in embedding space using contrastive learning on co-occurrence annotations. At inference time, AAR reranks an initial dense retrieval candidate set using bi-directional association scoring. On HotpotQA, AAR improves passage Recall@

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

When Do Intrinsic Rewards Work for Code Reasoning? A Comprehensive Study

Xiaolong Jin, Xuandong Zhao, Wenbo Guo et al. · 2026 · arXiv

Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards (RLVR) has driven substantial progress in large language model reasoning, but relies on ground-truth supervision that is costly or infeasible, especially in coding tasks. Recent work addresses this by deriving rewards from a model's own signals, such as majority voting or confidence-based scores, achieving notable success on mathematical reasoning benchmarks. However, code generation poses distinct challenges: programs are structurally complex, semantically equivalent solutions may differ syntactically, and verification typically requires executio

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Characters of p'-degree and Thompson's character degree theorem

Nguyen Ngoc Hung · 2015 · arXiv

A classical theorem of John Thompson on character degrees asserts that if the degree of every ordinary irreducible character of a finite group $G$ is 1 or divisible by a prime $p$, then $G$ has a normal $p$-complement. We obtain a significant improvement of this result by considering the average of $p'$-degrees of irreducible characters. We also consider fields of character values and prove several improvements of earlier related results.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Cowen's class and Thomson's class

Kunyu Guo, Hansong Huang · 2013 · arXiv

In studying commutants of analytic Toeplitz operators, Thomson proved a remarkable theorem which states that under a mild condition, the commutant of an analytic Toeplitz operator is equal to that of Toeplitz operator defined by a finite Blaschke product. Cowen gave an significant improvement of Thosom's result. In this paper, we will present examples in Cowen's class which does not lie in Thomson's class.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

From Co-Design to Metacognitive Laziness: Evaluating Generative AI in Vocational Education

Amir Yunus, Peng Rend Gay, Oon Teng Lee · 2025 · arXiv

This study examines the development and deployment of a Generative AI proof-of-concept (POC) designed to support lecturers in a vocational education setting in Singapore. Employing a user-centred, mixed-methods design process, we co-developed an AI chatbot with lecturers to address recurring instructional challenges during exam preparation, specifically managing repetitive questions and scaling feedback delivery. The POC achieved its primary operational goals: lecturers reported streamlined workflows, reduced cognitive load, and observed improved student confidence in navigating course content

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

HI Intensity Mapping with the MIGHTEE Survey: First Results of the HI Power Spectrum

Aishrila Mazumder, Laura Wolz, Zhaoting Chen et al. · 2025 · arXiv

We present the first results of the HI intensity mapping power spectrum analysis with the MeerKAT International GigaHertz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration (MIGHTEE) survey. We use data covering $\sim$4 square degrees in the COSMOS field using a frequency range 962.5 MHz to 1008.42 MHz, equivalent to HI emission in $0.4<z<0.48$. The data consists of 15 pointings with a total of 94.2 hours on-source. We verify the suitability of the MIGHTEE data for HI intensity mapping by testing for residual systematics across frequency, baselines and pointings. We also vary the window used for HI signal measu

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessAgricultural and Biological Sciences

Efficacy of mannan-oligosaccharide and live yeast feed additives on performance, rumen morphology, serum biochemical parameters and muscle morphometric characteristics in buffalo calves

Muhammad Zeeshan, Saima Masood, Saima Ashraf et al. · 2023 · arXiv

The objective of the current study was to assess the effect of dietary supplementations of mannan-oligosaccharide, live yeast, and a combination of these two additives on growth performance, histo-morphology of the rumen, and muscle morphometric attributes in buffalo calves. A total of twenty buffalo calves (average weight of 25 kg) having 3 months of age were distributed according to a complete randomized design. All animals were individually stalled in the shed and were fed ad-libitum. Experimental animals were divided into four groups for 67 days: Control group(without the inclusion of diet

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Single- and Multi-Task Architectures for Tool Presence Detection Challenge at M2CAI 2016

Andru P. Twinanda, Didier Mutter, Jacques Marescaux et al. · 2016 · arXiv

The tool presence detection challenge at M2CAI 2016 consists of identifying the presence/absence of seven surgical tools in the images of cholecystectomy videos. Here, we propose to use deep architectures that are based on our previous work where we presented several architectures to perform multiple recognition tasks on laparoscopic videos. In this technical report, we present the tool presence detection results using two architectures: (1) a single-task architecture designed to perform solely the tool presence detection task and (2) a multi-task architecture designed to perform jointly phase

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Validity of common modelling approximations for precessing binary black holes with higher-order modes

Antoni Ramos-Buades, Patricia Schmidt, Geraint Pratten et al. · 2020 · arXiv

The current paradigm for constructing waveforms from precessing compact binaries is to first construct a waveform in a non-inertial, co-precessing binary source frame followed by a time-dependent rotation to map back to the physical, inertial frame. A key insight in the construction of these models is that the co-precessing waveform can be effectively mapped to some equivalent aligned spin waveform. Secondly, the time-dependent rotation implicitly introduces $m$-mode mixing, necessitating an accurate description of higher-order modes in the co-precessing frame. We assess the efficacy of this m

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Reliability of Large Language Model Generated Clinical Reasoning in Assisted Reproductive Technology: Blinded Comparative Evaluation Study

Dou Liu, Ying Long, Sophia Zuoqiu et al. · 2025 · arXiv

Creating high-quality clinical Chains-of-Thought (CoTs) is crucial for explainable medical Artificial Intelligence (AI) while constrained by data scarcity. Although Large Language Models (LLMs) can synthesize medical data, their clinical reliability remains unverified. This study evaluates the reliability of LLM-generated CoTs and investigates prompting strategies to enhance their quality. In a blinded comparative study, senior clinicians in Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) evaluated CoTs generated via three distinct strategies: Zero-shot, Random Few-shot (using shallow examples), and Se

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Testing operational phase concepts in quantum optics

J. Rehacek, Z. Hradil, M. Dusek et al. · 1999 · arXiv

An experimental comparison of several operational phase concepts is presented. In particular, it is shown that statistically motivated evaluation of experimental data may lead to a significant improvement in phase fitting upon the conventional Noh, Fouge'res and Mandel procedure. The analysis is extended to the asymptotic limit of large intensities, where a strong evidence in favor of multi--dimensional estimation procedures has been found.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Quantifying the Poor Purity and Completeness of Morphological Samples Selected by Galaxy Colour

Rebecca J. Smethurst, Karen L. Masters, Brooke D. Simmons et al. · 2021 · arXiv

The galaxy population is strongly bimodal in both colour and morphology, and the two measures correlate strongly, with most blue galaxies being late-types (spirals) and most early-types, typically ellipticals, being red. This observation has led to the use of colour as a convenient selection criteria to make samples which are then labelled by morphology. Such use of colour as a proxy for morphology results in necessarily impure and incomplete samples. In this paper, we make use of the morphological labels produced by Galaxy Zoo to measure how incomplete and impure such samples are, considering

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Photometric metallicity of Galactic RR Lyrae stars in the Gaia DR3 era

Mahiguhappriya Prakash, Susmita Das, Harinder P. Singh et al. · 2026 · arXiv

We present a new, calibrated $G$-band relationship between pulsation period $P$, Fourier parameter $φ_{31}$, and metallicity [Fe/H] for galactic RR Lyrae stars from the Gaia survey. A set of 72 fundamental mode RR Lyrae stars were identified for deriving the relation in the $G$-band, after visual examination of their light curves. Unlike recent large-scale calibrations, our relation prioritizes calibration purity by anchoring exclusively to a homogeneously analyzed sample of high-resolution spectroscopic metallicities from the literature. Our best fit relation is $\text{[Fe/H]} = (-6.93 \pm 0.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Renyi Differential Privacy of the Subsampled Shuffle Model in Distributed Learning

Antonious M. Girgis, Deepesh Data, Suhas Diggavi · 2021 · arXiv

We study privacy in a distributed learning framework, where clients collaboratively build a learning model iteratively through interactions with a server from whom we need privacy. Motivated by stochastic optimization and the federated learning (FL) paradigm, we focus on the case where a small fraction of data samples are randomly sub-sampled in each round to participate in the learning process, which also enables privacy amplification. To obtain even stronger local privacy guarantees, we study this in the shuffle privacy model, where each client randomizes its response using a local different

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Time-aware Self-Attention Meets Logic Reasoning in Recommender Systems

Zhijian Luo, Zihan Huang, Jiahui Tang et al. · 2022 · arXiv

At the age of big data, recommender systems have shown remarkable success as a key means of information filtering in our daily life. Recent years have witnessed the technical development of recommender systems, from perception learning to cognition reasoning which intuitively build the task of recommendation as the procedure of logical reasoning and have achieve significant improvement. However, the logical statement in reasoning implicitly admits irrelevance of ordering, even does not consider time information which plays an important role in many recommendation tasks. Furthermore, recommenda

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Trust Over Fear: How Motivation Framing in System Prompts Affects AI Agent Debugging Depth

Wu Ji · 2026 · arXiv

System prompts for AI coding agents increasingly employ motivational framing -- from neutral task descriptions to fear-driven threats -- yet no controlled study has examined whether such framing affects agent behavior. We present two studies investigating how trust-based versus fear-based motivation framing in system prompts influences AI agent debugging performance. In Study 1, we conducted a controlled manual experiment comparing a trust-framed methodology (NoPUA) against an unframed baseline across 9 debugging scenarios using Claude Sonnet 4. Trust-framed agents found 59% more hidden issues

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Density-operator evolution: Complete positivity and the Keldysh real-time expansion

V. Reimer, M. R. Wegewijs · 2018 · arXiv

We study the reduced time-evolution of open quantum systems by combining quantum-information and statistical field theory. Inspired by prior work [EPL 102, 60001 (2013) and Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 050402 (2013)] we establish the explicit structure guaranteeing the complete positivity (CP) and trace-preservation (TP) of the real-time evolution expansion in terms of the microscopic system-environment coupling. This reveals a fundamental two-stage structure of the coupling expansion: Whereas the first stage defines the dissipative timescales of the system --before having integrated out the environm

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Bridging the Gap: Transfer Learning from English PLMs to Malaysian English

Mohan Raj Chanthran, Lay-Ki Soon, Huey Fang Ong et al. · 2024 · arXiv

Malaysian English is a low resource creole language, where it carries the elements of Malay, Chinese, and Tamil languages, in addition to Standard English. Named Entity Recognition (NER) models underperform when capturing entities from Malaysian English text due to its distinctive morphosyntactic adaptations, semantic features and code-switching (mixing English and Malay). Considering these gaps, we introduce MENmBERT and MENBERT, a pre-trained language model with contextual understanding, specifically tailored for Malaysian English. We have fine-tuned MENmBERT and MENBERT using manually annot

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Neural document expansion for ad-hoc information retrieval

Cheng Tang, Andrew Arnold · 2020 · arXiv

Recently, Nogueira et al. [2019] proposed a new approach to document expansion based on a neural Seq2Seq model, showing significant improvement on short text retrieval task. However, this approach needs a large amount of in-domain training data. In this paper, we show that this neural document expansion approach can be effectively adapted to standard IR tasks, where labels are scarce and many long documents are present.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Batch normalization does not improve initialization

Joris Dannemann, Gero Junike · 2025 · arXiv

Batch normalization is one of the most important regularization techniques for neural networks, significantly improving training by centering the layers of the neural network. There have been several attempts to provide a theoretical justification for batch ormalization. Santurkar and Tsipras (2018) [How does batch normalization help optimization? Advances in neural information rocessing systems, 31] claim that batch normalization improves initialization. We provide a counterexample showing that this claim s not true, i.e., batch normalization does not improve initialization.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

Does Interaction Improve Bayesian Reasoning with Visualization?

Ab Mosca, Alvitta Ottley, Remco Chang · 2021 · arXiv

Interaction enables users to navigate large amounts of data effectively, supports cognitive processing, and increases data representation methods. However, there have been few attempts to empirically demonstrate whether adding interaction to a static visualization improves its function beyond popular beliefs. In this paper, we address this gap. We use a classic Bayesian reasoning task as a testbed for evaluating whether allowing users to interact with a static visualization can improve their reasoning. Through two crowdsourced studies, we show that adding interaction to a static Bayesian reaso

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessMathematics

Preregistration does not improve the transparent evaluation of severity in Popper's philosophy of science or when deviations are allowed

Mark Rubin · 2024 · arXiv

One justification for preregistering research hypotheses, methods, and analyses is that it improves the transparent evaluation of the severity of hypothesis tests. In this article, I consider two cases in which preregistration does not improve this evaluation. First, I argue that, although preregistration may facilitate the transparent evaluation of severity in Mayo's error statistical philosophy of science, it does not facilitate this evaluation in Popper's theory-centric approach. To illustrate, I show that associated concerns about Type I error rate inflation are only relevant in the error

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessComputer Science

When is dataset cartography ineffective? Using training dynamics does not improve robustness against Adversarial SQuAD

Paul K. Mandal · 2025 · arXiv

In this paper, I investigate the effectiveness of dataset cartography for extractive question answering on the SQuAD dataset. I begin by analyzing annotation artifacts in SQuAD and evaluate the impact of two adversarial datasets, AddSent and AddOneSent, on an ELECTRA-small model. Using training dynamics, I partition SQuAD into easy-to-learn, ambiguous, and hard-to-learn subsets. I then compare the performance of models trained on these subsets to those trained on randomly selected samples of equal size. Results show that training on cartography-based subsets does not improve generalization to

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Does Anxiety Improve Economic Decision-Making?

Ian Crawford, Carl-Emil Pless · 2026 · arXiv

We study the associations between everyday economic decision-making quality and people's emotional states. Using high-frequency, highly disaggregated consumer "scanner" data, we show that the cost of poor decision-making is substantial, on average equal to around half of day-to-day consumption budgets. While material circumstances help explain decision-making quality, how people feel about those circumstances is equally important. Contrary to evidence that stress and worry impair performance in settings where distraction is costly, we find these same feelings are associated with improved decis