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.

All Replication Failure Negative / Null Result Report Failed Experiment Report Abandoned Hypothesis Methods Dead-End Short Note Null Dataset Protocol

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.

By fieldMedicine 12,218 Computer Science 744 Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 414 Social Sciences 302 Psychology 299 Physics 280 Neuroscience 244 Economics, Econometrics and Finance 196 Environmental Science 172 Mathematics 155 Agricultural and Biological Sciences 138 Engineering 135

5 results in Failed Experiment Report for "SARS-CoV-2"

Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessMedicine

Vaccinated and Convalescent Donor–Derived Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2–Specific T Cells as Adoptive Immunotherapy for High-Risk Coronavirus Disease 2019 Patients

Penelope‐Georgia Papayanni, D. Chasiotis, Kiriakos Koukoulias et al. · 2021 · Clinical Infectious Diseases

BACKGROUND: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic poses an urgent need for the development of effective therapies for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). METHODS: We first tested SARS-CoV-2-specific…

View details →DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciab371Cited by 20

Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessMedicine

Effect of methylprednisolone treatment on COVID-19: An inverse probability of treatment weighting analysis.

Lorenzo Porta, Sih-Shiang Huang, Chen Wei et al. · 2022 · PLoS ONE

Objectives While corticosteroids have been hypothesized to exert protective benefits in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, data remain mixed. This study sought to investigate the outcomes of methylprednisone administration in an Italian cohort of hospitalized patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods Patients with confirmatory testing for SARS-CoV-2 were retrospectively enrolled from a tertiary university hospital in Milan, Italy from March 1st to April 30th, 2020 and divided into two groups by administration of corticosteroids. Methylprednisolone was administered to patients not r

View details →DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266901

Failed Experiment Report

Evolution of Omicron lineage towards increased fitness in the upper respiratory tract in the absence of severe lung pathology

Wickenhagen A, Flagg M, Port J et al. · 2024 · Preprint

The emergence of the Omicron lineage represented a major genetic drift in SARS-CoV-2 evolution. This was associated with phenotypic changes including evasion of pre-existing immunity and decreased disease severity. Continuous evolution…

View details →DOI: 10.1101/2024.06.13.598902

Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessMedicine

Fragment-Based Development of NSP14 Exonuclease Inhibitors Confounded by Batch-to-Batch Variability.

Coker JA, Sun R, Polzer PM et al. · 2026 · ACS chemical biology

Point mutations in the exonuclease (ExoN) site of nonstructural protein 14 (NSP14) compromise the fitness of betacoronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-2, implicating NSP14 ExoN inhibition as an antiviral strategy. However, there are no advanced…

View details →DOI: 10.1021/acschembio.5c00930

Failed Experiment ReportMedicine

A mixed methods evaluation of a motivational enhancement intervention to increase SARS-CoV-2 testing among people experiencing houselessness and people who inject drugs.

Mauricio AM, Cioffi CC, Sanders AM et al. · 2025 · Psychological services

This explanatory sequential mixed methods hybrid Type 1 study examined the efficacy and implementation of Connect2Test, a brief motivational enhancement intervention to increase SARS-CoV-2 testing among people experiencing houselessness…

View details →DOI: 10.1037/ser0000939