Hypothesis

Short-term exposure to a body-worn 2.45 GHz wireless body area network, radiated by textile monopole or patch antennas, would alter the wearer's body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate or sense of well-being.

What failed

In a counterbalanced, crossover, single-blind experiment with both antenna topologies, the measured physiological parameters and well-being did not differ significantly from control; the null hypothesis of no effect was not rejected.

Broken assumption

Wearing an active 2.45 GHz body-area-network antenna measurably changes the wearer's physiology or well-being over the short term.

Why

The paper reports the null without proposing a mechanism, and the abstract's statistical description is partly garbled in the indexed text.

From the published paper: Masrakin et al. IEEE Access, 2019. ↗CC BY

Hypothesis

ERPs on gender-marked Dutch articles would reflect whether the upcoming noun was predictable, as Otten and van Berkum (2009) reported.

What failed

A close replication with N = 58, nearly identical materials, procedure and analysis failed to replicate the original effect, though the pattern was consistent with the original data.

Broken assumption

Prediction of upcoming nouns reliably shows up in ERPs to the articles that precede them.

Why

The authors discuss methodological differences that could have contributed, and question whether Dutch gender-marked determiners are a suitable test case for lexical pre-activation.

From the published paper: Kochari et al. Language Cognition and Neuroscience, 2018. ↗CC BY

Hypothesis

Transplanting embryonic-stem-cell-derived RPE cells under the retina would be safe and could improve visual function in advanced Stargardt disease, as earlier trials reporting acuity gains suggested.

What failed

In 12 participants given up to 200,000 cells, there was no uncontrolled proliferation or inflammation, but microperimetry showed no benefit at 12 months, small acuity gains in 4 people were not sustained or were matched in the untreated eye, and quality of life did not change. At the highest dose one eye showed local retinal thinning and lost sensitivity.

Broken assumption

Visual-acuity gains reported in earlier RPE transplant trials reflected real structural and functional benefit in the treated retina.

Why

The authors note the subretinal pigment may mean surviving cells or only released pigment, and that at this advanced, slowly progressing stage any protective effect might only show after much longer follow-up.

From the published paper: Mehat et al. Ophthalmology, 2018. ↗CC BY

Hypothesis

Adding endovascular therapy after intravenous t-PA would increase functional independence at 90 days in moderate-to-severe acute ischemic stroke, compared with t-PA alone.

What failed

The trial was stopped early for futility after 656 patients. Functional independence (modified Rankin 0–2) at 90 days was 40.8% vs 38.7% (adjusted difference 1.5 points, 95% CI −6.1 to 9.1), with similar mortality and hemorrhage.

Broken assumption

Adding endovascular clot removal after intravenous t-PA improves functional independence in this patient population.

Stopped early for

futility

Why

No significant benefit of the combined approach over t-PA alone in this trial, in either predefined stroke-severity subgroup; safety was similar.

From the published paper: Broderick JP, Palesch YY, Demchuk AM, et al. (IMS III). N Engl J Med, 2013. NCT00359424 ↗

Hypothesis

Showing users a virtual body that mirrors their own arm movements during immersive telepresence would increase their sense of presence and their preference for the experience.

What failed

A 20-person pilot found more presence and preference with the virtual body, but a preregistered confirmatory study with 62 participants did not reproduce this; only behavioural measures hinted at higher presence.

Broken assumption

The presence boost from a virtual body in fully simulated VR carries over to video-based telepresence.

Why

From qualitative data and interaction models, the authors suspect the quality and style of the virtual arms, and the clash between animated arms and live video, produced individual differences that moderated presence.

From the published paper: Arora et al. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2022. ↗CC BY

Hypothesis

Because of its immunomodulatory effects, azithromycin 500 mg daily for up to 10 days would lower 28-day mortality in patients hospitalised with COVID-19.

What failed

In the RECOVERY platform trial, 7763 patients were randomised (2582 azithromycin, 5181 usual care); 22% died within 28 days in each arm (rate ratio 0.97, 95% CI 0.87-1.07, p = 0.50). Length of stay and the proportion discharged alive within 28 days also did not differ.

Broken assumption

Azithromycin's anti-inflammatory activity is strong enough to change survival in hospitalised COVID-19.

Why

The abstract reports no benefit and does not offer a mechanistic explanation.

From the published paper: Abaleke et al. The Lancet, 2021. ↗CC BY

Hypothesis

On a complex survival-ranking task, deliberating groups would outperform a statistical 'wisdom of crowds' aggregate, and weighting individual answers by confidence would improve aggregation, as recent studies on simpler tasks found.

What failed

Both crowds and groups beat individuals, but collective decision-making did not outperform the wisdom of crowds, and confidence-weighted aggregation showed no advantage over unweighted aggregation.

Broken assumption

Deliberation and confidence weighting improve group judgments regardless of task complexity and group size.

Why

Simulations varying group size and weighting sensitivity indicated the confidence-weighting null came from the small group size, not from the complexity of the survival task.

From the published paper: Hamada et al. Cognitive Research Principles and Implications, 2020. ↗CC BY

Hypothesis

Adding embedded metacognitive questions to cooperative training would improve high school students' socioscientific decision making and metacognitive regulation beyond cooperative learning alone.

What failed

With 360 senior high school students, both cooperative conditions beat the untreated control on decision making, but the cooperative-plus-metacognition group did not outperform plain cooperative learning. Its higher posttest scores on metacognitive regulation were not significant, and all groups improved over time.

Broken assumption

Explicit metacognitive prompts add value on top of cooperative learning for socioscientific reasoning.

Why

The abstract does not give a reason.

From the published paper: Eggert et al. Education Research International, 2013. ↗CC BY

Hypothesis

Bringing triglycerides down to target within 72 hours of admission would improve outcomes in hypertriglyceridemic acute pancreatitis, and higher admission triglycerides would mean more severe disease.

What failed

In 345 retrospectively studied patients, those who reached the early TG goal (274) and those who did not (71) did not differ in pancreatic necrosis, length of stay or in-hospital mortality. The highest admission TG levels did not track the most severe disease, and neither admission TG nor the size of the 72-hour reduction correlated with necrosis.

Broken assumption

How fast triglycerides are lowered early on drives the course of hypertriglyceridemic pancreatitis.

Why

The abstract gives no mechanism; the authors suggest a TG threshold of about 56.5 mmol/L may mark risk of progression rather than a linear dose effect.

From the published paper: Yu et al. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2026. ↗CC BY