Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell U.
The retractions keep stacking up for Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, whose high-profile research on the psychology of diet has turned out to be riddled with errors. The latest blow fell on Wednesday, when the JAMA Network, a group of journals published by the American Medical Association, announced that six of Wansink’s papers, appearing in three journals, had been retracted.
In May the network issued an “expression of concern” and asked Cornell to conduct an evaluation of those papers. The university informed the network that “because we do not have access to the original data, we cannot assure you that the results of the studies are valid.”
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Tristan Spinski
Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell U.
The retractions keep stacking up for Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, whose high-profile research on the psychology of diet has turned out to be riddled with errors. The latest blow fell on Wednesday, when the JAMA Network, a group of journals published by the American Medical Association, announced that six of Wansink’s papers, appearing in three journals, had been retracted.
In May the network issued an “expression of concern” and asked Cornell to conduct an evaluation of those papers. The university informed the network that “because we do not have access to the original data, we cannot assure you that the results of the studies are valid.”
In an email to The Chronicle, Wansink called the latest set of retractions “very unjust” and went on to say that he’s “very proud of all of these papers, and I’m confident they will be replicated by other groups.” The professor also provided a copy of an email to his co-authors in which he wrote that “this seems to be happening based on us not being able to send them the original surveys from 10-20 years ago.”
The papers were on such topics as whether pre-ordering lunches helps students make better food choices, and whether watching action-packed television shows causes viewers to snack more.
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The six new retractions bring Wansink’s total to 13 — or 14, depending on how you count. One of the papers was retracted, revised, then retracted again after it was discovered that the researchers had gotten the age range wrong for the children in the study. (They were not 8 to 11 years old, as originally reported, but 3 to 5.)
Some Cornell faculty members worry that the steady drip-drip of revelations about Wansink’s research doesn’t reflect well on the university. Neil Lewis Jr., an assistant professor of communication and social behavior at Cornell, said he gets asked about Wansink whenever he attends conferences. Lewis wrote by email that his gut reaction to the latest news was: “Oh Jesus, there’s more? I can’t keep up anymore.”
As the number of retractions has grown, some observers have also wondered when the university’s investigation of Wansink, which began last year, would conclude. A Cornell spokesman said on Wednesday that the review was now complete and that the university would “issue a statement about its outcome on Friday.”
When asked whether he had been informed that an announcement was imminent, Wansink replied via email: “No. I didn’t know that.”
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Tom Bartlett is a senior writer who covers science and other things. Follow him on Twitter @tebartl.
