Brian Wansink Scientific Misconduct?

Jruzer

I read Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating and found it to be informative and helpful. But now I see he is being accused of scientific misconduct, including corrections to, and even retractions of, some of his published papers.

I don't have a strong opinion on the controversy. Certainly it's disappointing if the bulk of the allegations are true. Here's the article:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemlee/brian-wansink-cornell-smarter-lunchrooms-flawed-data?utm_term=.xqq751nZkm#.snWADW4roM

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janejellyroll

suzannesimmons3 wrote: »

Buzzfeed. ....really.....

They've got a pretty stellar investigations department, not sure what the problem with them is.

Jruzer

suzannesimmons3 wrote: »

Buzzfeed. ....really.....

@suzannesimmons3, I agree that Buzzfeed is often clickbaity. But did you actually look at the article? It's fairly substantial.

The main scientist behind the work, Cornell University professor Brian Wansink, has made headlines for his research into the psychology of eating. His experiments have found, for example, that women who put cereal on their kitchen counters weigh more than those who don’t, and that people will pour more wine if they’re holding the glass than if it's sitting on a table. Over the past two decades he’s written two popular books and more than 100 research papers, and enjoyed widespread media coverage (including on BuzzFeed).

Yet over the past year, Wansink and his “Food and Brand Lab” have come under fire from scientists and statisticians who’ve spotted all sorts of red flags — including data inconsistencies, mathematical impossibilities, errors, duplications, exaggerations, eyebrow-raising interpretations, and instances of self-plagiarism — in 50 of his studies.

Wansink began drawing scrutiny last November when, in a now-deleted blog post, he praised a grad student for taking the data from a “failed study” of an all-you-can-eat Italian lunch buffet and reanalyzing it multiple times until she came up with interesting results. These findings — that, for example, men overeat when women are around — eventually resulted in a series of published studies about pizza consumption.

To outside scientists, it reeked of statistical manipulation — that the data had been sliced and diced so much that the results were just false positives. It’s a problem that has cropped up again and again in social science research, and that a growing number of scientists are trying to address by replicating studies and calling out errors on social media.

Over the winter, van der Zee saw that Wansink’s blog post was accruing dozens of disapproving comments. He teamed up with two other scientists who were similarly intrigued: Nicholas Brown, also a graduate student in the Netherlands, and Jordan Anaya, a computational biologist in Virginia. At first they exchanged emails with Wansink about apparent errors in four of the pizza papers, van der Zee said. But when he stopped replying to them, they decided to go public with the 150 errors they’d found in the four papers. Then Andrew Gelman, a statistician at Columbia University, accused Wansink’s lab of manipulating the data — or using “junk science,” in his words — to dress up their conclusions.

These critiques soon captured journalists’ attention. In early February, Retraction Watch interviewed Wansink about his disputed work, and New York magazine declared that “A Popular Diet-Science Lab Has Been Publishing Really Shoddy Research.”

On March 21, van der Zee decided it was time to formally keep track of all the issues that he and others were finding. “The Wansink Dossier” mushroomed into a list of dozens of allegedly faulty papers.

Soon the editor of JAMA Pediatrics, Frederick Rivara, emailed Wansink with a link to Brown’s critique of the Elmo apples study. “Upon reflection, we share several of the concerns outlined in the blog post,” Rivara wrote. In a later email, he wrote, “There is substantial missing data.” (Rivara declined to comment.)

Wansink consulted a few colleagues, including a public relations director at Cornell, to figure out how to respond. “I think I should send him a note,” he wrote. “This is data that we can’t seem to find.”

So began a mad scramble, with the researchers combing computers and old emails and contacting ex-colleagues in search of the original data.

Jruzer

If you don't like Buzzfeed, try these:

The Guardian

Ars Technica

New York Magazine

HeidiCooksSupper

It does bring up some of the issues rife in social science research. Arguably, several of the papers should never have made it through the refereeing process to publication without careful editing recommended. One of the things that astounded me going through the process was that at no point did the referees ask to see our raw data. Of course, referees are volunteers -- other professors, graduate students, and other experts who are asked to review the articles. How much time and attention they can commit to the process varies.

As to the "self-plagiarization," I'm not sure how that would be decided. Self-citation and use of one's own findings is pretty much expected. You don't forget everything you know with each study. Arguably, a previous study adds to your expertise for the next.

Then we come to the issues of sampling, sample sizes, control, replicability, etc. Among the problems is finding funding for doing replication studies. Funding agencies want to fund new things not "reinvent the wheel." Another problem is that journals do not like to publish replication studies. To stay employed, researchers have to find funding and produce publications. Without those, your job can end.

As to sample sizes and controls, there isn't a whole lot of money out there for soft (social) science research as there is for the harder sciences. Human subject studies involve a lot of ethical issues, questions, and methodological issues. It is difficult to establish a true control group and intervening variables abound.

I guess, being MFPers, we could call it the "Superfood" effect.

Oh, gawd. I'm so glad I'm retired and far away from the study of "science communication," "scientometrics," "faculty behavior," ... I'd much rather talk about the pasta sauce we just had ... I was one of the authors of "Secondary and Tertiary Citing: A Study of Referencing Behavior in the Literature of Citation Analysis Deriving from the Ortega Hypothesis of Cole and Cole." Kind of makes you want to vomit, huh.

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Jruzer

suzannesimmons3 wrote: »

Tbh no....I only saw buzzfeed

I may have had the same reaction, except I saw it linked at Instapundit and didn't see the source right away.

RemoteWilderness

You can't imagine how much sleep I am losing over this.

Jruzer

@RemoteWilderness, I can see by the amount of responses this thread is getting that it is extremely interesting to many members.

Criminy, I knew I should have put something about "exercise calories", or "keto", or "Texas" in the title. From now on I'll be sure to only post from the approved list of topics.

janejellyroll

Jruzer wrote: »

@RemoteWilderness, I can see by the amount of responses this thread is getting that it is extremely interesting to many members.

Criminy, I knew I should have put something about "exercise calories", or "keto", or "Texas" in the title. From now on I'll be sure to only post from the approved list of topics.

For what it's worth, I read it and found it extremely interesting but I didn't feel like I had anything to contribute to the conversation so I didn't write anything about it. So . . . from at least one poster, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Jruzer

janejellyroll wrote: »

Jruzer wrote: »

@RemoteWilderness, I can see by the amount of responses this thread is getting that it is extremely interesting to many members.

Criminy, I knew I should have put something about "exercise calories", or "keto", or "Texas" in the title. From now on I'll be sure to only post from the approved list of topics.

For what it's worth, I read it and found it extremely interesting but I didn't feel like I had anything to contribute to the conversation so I didn't write anything about it. So . . . from at least one poster, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Thanks, @janejellyroll. I'm in a bit of a sardonic mood today.

jdlobb

People need to learn better to differentiate between Buzzfeed News and Buzzfeed clickbait. They've done some excellent reporting the last couple years.

janejellyroll

jdlobb wrote: »

People need to learn better to differentiate between Buzzfeed News and Buzzfeed clickbait. They've done some excellent reporting the last couple years.

Exactly, it's a whole separate thing from the "Which member of One Direction is your soul mate?" quizzes and constant Kardashian update part of the site.

Azdak

Jruzer wrote: »

@RemoteWilderness, I can see by the amount of responses this thread is getting that it is extremely interesting to many members.

Criminy, I knew I should have put something about "exercise calories", or "keto", or "Texas" in the title. From now on I'll be sure to only post from the approved list of topics.

Marketplace of ideas, bro.

Jruzer

Azdak wrote: »

Jruzer wrote: »

@RemoteWilderness, I can see by the amount of responses this thread is getting that it is extremely interesting to many members.

Criminy, I knew I should have put something about "exercise calories", or "keto", or "Texas" in the title. From now on I'll be sure to only post from the approved list of topics.

Marketplace of ideas, bro.

@Azdak, certainly I have no problem if people don't want to read or respond to my thread. I just posted something I thought was interesting.

But it seems gratuitous for another member to specifically comment that they find the thread uninteresting, no?