And then this happened:
Shorter version: Prominent dietary researcher, provider of much patronising policy advice on how to manage the population’s eating habits, has reported numerically identical results from quite different experiments. Refuses to share data, because reasons.
two studies published by Wansink in 2001 and 2003 present uncannily similar results, with 39 out of 45 outcomes identical to the decimal point, despite being drawn from different samples. In the 2001 study, Wansink reports recruiting “153 members of the Brand Revitalisation Consumer Panel” while in the second study the reported sample consisted of 654 respondents to a nationwide survey “based on addresses obtained from census records”. How such similar results could emerge from two distinct studies, and two distinct samples, remains unexplained. At the time of publication, Wansink had not responded to requests for comment.
