Famous food scientist must retire after research has been questioned



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On Thursday, he resigned after 14 years at the university, effective June 30, 2019. Shortly after, he told CNN he respected his findings, adding that an investigation had concluded that Wansink had committed a school misconduct.

The newspaper's announcement almost doubled the number of articles it removed – now 13 – according to a database maintained by Retraction Watch, a blog that covers retractions in the scientific community.
As director of Cornell's Food and Brand Lab, Wansink has published research on healthy eating, portion control and food psychology. In 2007, the White House chose to oversee initiatives with the United States Department of Agriculture, such as the 2010 Dietary Guidelines and the Food Pyramid Guide. He has appeared in several media, including CNN.
Cornell University has been invited to conduct an independent study of research. In May, JAMA editor Dr. Howard Bauchner publicly voiced "ongoing concerns about the validity of these publications," published in JAMA and two of its peer-reviewed journals.

The university revealed the findings of its investigation Thursday.

"For more than a year, Cornell University has been committed to reviewing allegations of misconduct against Professor Brian Wansink, many of which were very public in nature," said Cornell University Vice-Principal Thursday. Michael I. Kotlikoff. "The committee found that Professor Wansink had committed academic misconduct in his research and studies, including misstatements of research data, problematic statistical techniques, the inability to document and preserve research results, and

"Professor Wansink has resigned and will be retiring from Cornell at the end of this academic year and has been withdrawn from teaching and research and will be forced to co-operate with him. 39, university his previous research. "

Prior to the release of Kotlikoff's statement, Wansink told CNN that the latest retractions had taken him by surprise.

"It was a surprise," Wansink wrote in an email on Thursday. "According to my coauthors and myself, independent analyzes of our datasets confirmed all of our published results."

Wansink said he did not keep some of the surveys and original sheets used in his research. Some were filled with paper and pencil more than two decades ago, he said. Wansink claimed that he was "very proud of all these documents and I am confident that they will be reproduced by other groups".

The controversy surrounding Wansink's research had been preparing for some time. One of his seven previously retracted articles was eventually replaced – and then retracted. A 2017 review of four Wansink studies said that the "attempt to digest" the "statistics stomach burns".
Wansink is far from the only researcher to have more than a dozen retractions. The ranking of Topping Retraction Watch is composed of scientists with 183, 96 and 58 retractions. Wansink does not even make the top 30.
According to an article published in 2011 in the journal Nature, reports have reported an "increase in the number of documents removed", highlighting what the experts describe as "weaknesses of the system to treat them". According to this document, retraction notices were multiplied by ten over the previous decade, while the actual number of published articles increased by only 44%. Experts say this may be due in part to the fact that we are starting to better detect erroneous searches – even though there are many more things that go unnoticed.

The reasons for the retraction vary according to major errors (which can not be corrected by corrections) or plagiarism to outright fraud. Researchers have been caught falsifying data and manipulating images, but they can also re-analyze the data in a more subtle way and produce positive results. Experts say there is pressure on researchers to get more funds.

Although the articles removed represent less than 1% of published articles, they can have a disproportionate impact.

Famously, a retracted 1998 study indicated that autism was linked to childhood vaccines. It was withdrawn after the principal investigator, who subsequently lost his medical license, was found to have altered or distorted information about the study participants. Yet some parents have not vaccinated their children against measles, mumps and rubella.

Aaron Cooper from CNN contributed to this report.

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