Cornell's Food and Brand Lab Appears to Be Melting Down – New York Magazine

Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE bad science March 2, 2017 03/02/2017 11:26 a.m. By Jesse Singal

Late in January, the researchers Jordan Anaya, Nick Brown, and Tim van der Zee identified some fairly baffling problems in the research published by Cornell Universitys Food and Brand Lab, one of the more famous and prolific behavioral-science labs in the country, and published a paper revealing their findings. As I wrote last month, the problems included 150 errors in just four of [the] labs papers, strong signs of major problems in the labs other research, and a spate of questions about the quality of the work that goes on there.

Brian Wansink, the labs head and a big name in social science, was a co-author on all those papers, and refused to share the underlying data in a manner that could help resolve the situation, though he did announce certain reforms to his labs practices, and said he would be hiring someone uninvolved with the original papers to reanalyze the data. Wansink, whose lab is known for producing a steady stream of catchy, media-friendly findings about how to nudge people toward healthier eating and habits in general, has also openly admitted to a variety of data slicing-and-dicing methods that are very likely to produce misleading and overblown results.

Wansinks problems just got a lot worse. Today, Brown, a Ph.D. student at the University of Groningen, published a blog post highlighting many more problems with Wansinks research practices. First, it appears that over the years, Wansink has made a standard practice of self-plagiarism, regularly taking snippets of his text from one publication and dropping them into another a practice that, while not as serious as outright data fraud or plagiarizing someone elses material, is very much frowned upon. And sometimes it was more than snippets. Brown includes the following image of one Wansink article in which all of the yellow material (plus three of the four figures, which Brown said he couldnt figure out how to highlight) is lifted from Wansinks own previously published work:

In another instance, Brown writes, Wansink appears to have published the same text as two different book chapters at around the same time. Each chapter is around 7,000 words long, he writes. The paragraph structures are identical. Most of the sentences are identical, or differ only in trivial details.

Brown both offers a compelling case that this sort of self-plagiarism was a pattern for Wansink, and that he may have engaged in more serious misconduct as well. Summing up Browns findings in The Guardian, Chris Chambers and Pete Etchells write:

Its important to note that Wansink published these studies before coming to the Food and Brand Lab, but still this is entirely bizarre. Its a really, really hard thing to explain, and Occams razor doesnt point to any explanations that dont involve, at best, negligence that would likely derail the careers of most young researchers, and at worst outright data fraud.

Its now even more urgent for Wansink and Cornell to offer up a meaningful response to this steady drumbeat of serious allegations. As I argued last month, 150 errors in four papers would on its own be a reason not to trust anything produced by the Food and Brand Lab not until Wansink can explain exactly what happened. Now, though? What possible reason is there to trust this labs output at all, let alone for journalists to continue to publicize its findings?

Up to this point, it appears Cornell has given Wansink near-full discretion over how to handle all this. While Cornell encourages transparent responses to scientific critique, we respect our facultys role as independent investigators to determine the most appropriate response to such requests, absent claims of misconduct or data sharing agreements, John J. Carberry, the universitys head of media relations, said in a statement emailed to Science of Us last month.

That sentence has not aged well. Maybe its time for Cornell to seize the reins rather than act as though whats going on here is just normal scientific back and forth that Wansink can address on his own. Until the universitys administrators do, this growing scandal will continue to inflict serious damage on Cornells reputation as a research university.

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