Cornell Food Researcher (who we've heard about his studies) Under Fraud Review, Resigns.

[TheBlackAdder]

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In 2015, I wrote a profile of Brian Wansink, a Cornell University behavioral science researcher who seemed to have it all: a high-profile lab at an elite university, more than 200 scientific studies to his name, a high-up government appointment, and a best-selling book. Plus, his research was really cool: Wansink studied how our environment affects our eating habits. He found, for example, that people who leave their cereal in plain view tend to weigh more than people who hide it away in a cupboard, and that people eat more when they use bigger plates. Like the junk food he studied, his work had an almost addictive quality.

So I took two flights and a drive to Ithaca, New York, to spend a few days with Wansink. His empire was impressive: Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab, which he ran, had its own test kitchens and dining rooms with two-way mirrors. His graduate students seemed to adore him. One night, he invited me to his stately lakeside home, where his wife cooked dinner and we all chatted into the night about how his beginnings as a working-class Iowa kid had shaped his libertarian ideology. Wansink even took me out to the garage to show off the legendary bottomless soup bowls that had earned him an Ignobel Prize. I came away certain that I had found a worthy profile subject. Indeed, when my article ran, it was the most-read story on the Mother Jones website for days.

There’s just one problem: It’s no longer clear how much of Wansink’s work can withstand scientific scrutiny. In January 2017, a team of researchers reviewed four of his published papers and turned up 150 inconsistencies. Since then, in a slowly unfolding scandal, Wansink’s data, methods, and integrity have been publicly called into question. Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) retracted six articles he co-authored. To date, a whopping 13 Wansink studies have been retracted.

The day after JAMA announced its retractions, Cornell released a statement saying an internal campus investigation had “found that Professor Wansink committed academic misconduct in his research and scholarship, including misreporting of research data, problematic statistical techniques, failure to properly document and preserve research results, and inappropriate authorship.” Wansink, the statement added, “has been removed from all teaching and research. Instead, he will be obligated to spend his time cooperating with the university in its ongoing review of his prior research.”

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2018/09/cornell-food-researcher-brian-wansink-13-papers-retracted-how-were-they-published/

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