Trickle Down Episode 18: Viral Science (Patreon)

Brian Wansink was the Head of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University. While there, he did exciting research that suggested eating healthier and encouraging others to eat healthier was as simple as providing subtle hints and nudges towards the preferred behavior.

He’s perhaps most famous for the claim that if you take a larger plate to the buffet, you’ll eat more than if you were to take a small plate.

For a long time he was easily the world’s most prominent voice on food psychology. He published bestselling books. He was constantly interviewed by national media. He even had major influence in the government. He served for two years as the Director of the US Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy.

It’s fair to say that Brian Wasnick affected how millions of people prepared, presented, and ate food.

However, his reputation came crashing down from 2016 through 2018. It was discovered, partly through an accidental confession by Brian Wansink himself, that his papers were frequently based on shaky and perhaps outright fraudulent data analysis.

The scandal was so bad that Cornell determined that Wansink had committed scientific misconduct and removed him from all teaching and research positions.

This is a story about what happens when someone treats science like a business with the goal of gaining the most influence and media coverage, rather than a project of gaining an empirical understanding of the real world.

REFERENCES

John, Leslie K., George Loewenstein, and Drazen Prelec. "Measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth telling." Psychological science 23, no. 5 (2012): 524-532.

Kincaid, Ellie. “Cornell food marketing researcher who retired after misconduct finding is publishing again.” Retraction Watch (2022)

https://retractionwatch.com/2022/05/31/cornell-food-marketing-researcher-who-retired-after-misconduct-finding-is-publishing-again/

Ritchie, Stuart. Science fictions: How fraud, bias, negligence, and hype undermine the search for truth. Metropolitan Books, 2020

McCook, Alison. “Backlash prompts prominent nutrition researcher to reanalyze multiple papers” Retraction Watch (2017)

https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/02/backlash-prompts-prominent-nutrition-researcher-reanalyze-multiple-papers/

Lee, Stephanie M. "Here’s How Cornell Scientist Brian Wansink Turned Shoddy Data Into Viral Studies About How We Eat”  BuzzFeed News (2018)

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/brian-wansink-cornell-p-hacking

Lee, Stephanie M. "This Controversial Ivy League Scientist Left His Kickstarter Donors High And Dry”  BuzzFeed News (2018)

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/brian-wansink-kickstarter-weight-loss

The Donald Trump of Food Research

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920200606/https://medium.com/@OmnesRes/the-donald-trump-of-food-research-49e2bc7daa41

Severson, Kim. "Seduced by Snacks? No, Not You" New York times. (2006)

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/dining/11snac.html

Bartlett, Tom. "Spoiled science." Chronicle of Higher Education 63, no. 28 (2017).

https://web.archive.org/web/20210205080826/https://www.chronicle.com/article/spoiled-science/

Newburger, Emma. "Students who worked in Cornell food lab say director’s retracted studies stain reputations." The Cornell Daily Sun 8 (2018).

https://cornellsun.com/2018/02/08/cornell-professors-continuous-retractions-stained-lab-reputation-students-say/

ABC News. 100 Calorie Snack Packs More Expensive.

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Consumer/story?id=3526951&page=1

Wong, Elaine. “100-Calorie Packs Pack It In” Brand Week. (2009)

https://web.archive.org/web/20091010010938/http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/packaged-goods/e3i15f4e2b3b4a487b3fdbd95479d5b964f?pn=1

ASU study: 100-calorie packs make dieters eat more. (2008)

https://news.asu.edu/content/asu-study-100-calorie-packs-make-dieters-eat-more

Jenkins, Robin Mather "The wizard of why.” Chicago Tribune. (2005)

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2005/03/30/the-wizard-of-why/

Butler, Kiera. “This Fast-Food-Loving, Organics-Hating Ivy League Prof Will Trick You Into Eating Better” Mother Jones (2015)

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/03/brian-wansink-cornell-junk-food-health/

van der Zee, Tim, Jordan Anaya, and Nicholas JL Brown. "Statistical heartburn: an attempt to digest four pizza publications from the Cornell food and brand lab." BMC nutrition 3 (2017): 1-15.

Wansink, Brian. Slim by design: Mindless eating solutions for everyday life. Hay House, Inc, 2016

Wansink, Brian. Mindless eating: Why we eat more than we think. Bantam, 2010