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This really just reads like a smear campaign. I'm not making the claim that there's not something wrong, just that this article does an incredibly poor job of

This really just reads like a smear campaign. I'm not making the claim that there's not something wrong, just that this article does an incredibly poor job of showing evidence that there's a real problem, or even what that problem is. They claim that he's "come under fire from scientists and statisticians who’ve spotted all sorts of red flags ... in 50 of his studies", and provide three links to back it up. Two of those three links just focus on the same 4 articles, and the third claims 45 papers contain "minor to very serious issues"[1]. The majority of those issues are minor, and out of those the vast majority of those are "data duplication" and "self plagiarism". I can see that being an issue as far as professional conduct goes, but it wouldn't reverse/invalidate the results of the study. Left over from that, there are 15 papers with "critical data" issues, three of which have had corrections issued. And from the titles of these papers, they don't sound like groundbreaking science that's likely to lead to policy changes anywhere. And my guess would be he knew they were useless and didn't put much time into them. So, maybe the guy really is a piece of #(&, but this article did a pretty poor job of making a convincing argument to show it. The focus on minor issues, and issues that have no regard on the outcome of the paper, and papers that have pretty useless outcomes make this smell more like a smear campaign than an attempt to protect the public from evil scientists. [1] http://www.timvanderzee.com/the-wansink-dossier-an-overview/ http://www.timvanderzee.com/the-wansink-dossier-an-overview/

sTeamTraen 9y ago
Concerning the data duplication issue: look here http://steamtraen.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/some-instances-of-apparent-duplicate.html http://steamtraen.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/some-instances-of-a... (section E). You have two completely different studies with almost identical tables of results. If this is what it looks like, that ought to be a career-ending problem. It is very hard to imagine an accidental explanation, particularly since the lead author stated, in a post that he later deleted but which is archived here http://web.archive.org/web/20170316133823/http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/note-brian-wansink-research http://web.archive.org/web/20170316133823/http://foodpsychol..., that "a master’s thesis was intentionally expanded upon through a second study which offered more data that affirmed its findings with the same language, more participants and the same results". The same results. To two significant figures. In 17 out of 18 cases. Sure. And if you still want to separate out data duplication as being in some way a less serious problem: as a minimum, it means one of those two studies is very likely completely wrong. Concerning "they don't sound like groundbreaking science that's likely to lead to policy changes anywhere": I agree that this work mostly sounds like fluffy BS that you might expect to see in a science fair project. But on the back of his reputation acquired precisely through these studies, the principal author became the leading authority on food policy (especially for school-age children) in the United States.
- gmiller123456 9y ago
  I'm not claiming the duplication issues aren't issues with his professional conduct. But from a purely scientific point of view, they do not change the results. This article is trying to make the claim that 1)this guy has issues in some of his publications, 2) some of this guy's publications were used for the "Smarter Lunches Program", so 3) the Smarter Lunches Program is flawed. The only attempt they make at connections between these three points is that the same guy is involved. They made no attempt to say the flawed publications were used to design the lunch program, and made no attempt to show the lunch program was flawed as a result.

sTeamTraen 9y ago

Concerning the data duplication issue: look here http://steamtraen.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/some-instances-of-apparent-duplicate.html http://steamtraen.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/some-instances-of-a... (section E). You have two completely different studies with almost identical tables of results. If this is what it looks like, that ought to be a career-ending problem. It is very hard to imagine an accidental explanation, particularly since the lead author stated, in a post that he later deleted but which is archived here http://web.archive.org/web/20170316133823/http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/note-brian-wansink-research http://web.archive.org/web/20170316133823/http://foodpsychol..., that "a master’s thesis was intentionally expanded upon through a second study which offered more data that affirmed its findings with the same language, more participants and the same results". The same results. To two significant figures. In 17 out of 18 cases. Sure. And if you still want to separate out data duplication as being in some way a less serious problem: as a minimum, it means one of those two studies is very likely completely wrong. Concerning "they don't sound like groundbreaking science that's likely to lead to policy changes anywhere": I agree that this work mostly sounds like fluffy BS that you might expect to see in a science fair project. But on the back of his reputation acquired precisely through these studies, the principal author became the leading authority on food policy (especially for school-age children) in the United States.

gmiller123456 9y ago
I'm not claiming the duplication issues aren't issues with his professional conduct. But from a purely scientific point of view, they do not change the results. This article is trying to make the claim that 1)this guy has issues in some of his publications, 2) some of this guy's publications were used for the "Smarter Lunches Program", so 3) the Smarter Lunches Program is flawed. The only attempt they make at connections between these three points is that the same guy is involved. They made no attempt to say the flawed publications were used to design the lunch program, and made no attempt to show the lunch program was flawed as a result.