Original source: The retraction ledger of a discredited science lab from https://fo-sci.org/
Forty-five original publications by Brian Wansink — the Cornell food-behaviour researcher whose lab collapsed in a data-integrity scandal — carry a retraction, an expression of concern, a published correction, or a PubPeer misconduct flag. This is their combined timeline: when each paper was published, when it was flagged, and how many times the literature kept citing it after the alarm was raised. Retractions, expressions of concern and corrections are dated from the Retraction Watch database; each corrigendum and erratum is folded back onto the article it corrects rather than counted as its own paper.
Sources Dimensions.ai (metadata, citations, funding) · Retraction Watch (integrity events)
Exported Sep 2026
Scope retracted · EoC · correction · PubPeer-flagged
45
flagged publications — retracted, corrected, under EoC, or flagged on PubPeer
17
formally retracted — papers withdrawn from the record
3,025
total citations — accrued by the flagged papers
739
citations after the flag — references made after the first public integrity signal
Section 01 — The master timeline
Every paper, every integrity event, on one axis
Each row is one flagged publication, plotted from its publication date to today. Markers are integrity events (click one to open the paper on doi.org); the base bars show yearly citation volume — grey normally, red once the citation lands after the first integrity flag, and cyan for a self-citation (a citation from another of Wansink’s own papers). Hover any citation bar to list every citing paper that year; hover a marker for its date. Filter by event type or re-sort at will.
Section 02 — The disinformation tax
Citations don’t stop when the science does
A retraction is meant to remove a finding from the scientific record. In practice, discredited claims keep being cited for years — each citation a small, compounding tax paid by the literature that trusts them. Below: citations accrued before vs after each paper’s first public integrity flag.
Section 03 — The self-citation web
The flagged papers cite each other
Discredited findings were reinforced from within: 54 citation links run between papers in this set — one compromised study lending authority to the next. Each arc connects a citing paper (left tick) to the flagged paper it cites. Hover an arc for the pair.
Section 04 — Who paid for it
Public funding behind the flagged work
Ten grants — chiefly from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its National Institute of Food and Agriculture — are linked to these publications in Dimensions. Where Dimensions records an award amount, it is shown; several USDA cooperative agreements have no disclosed figure.
| Grant | Funder | Years | Amount (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total disclosed award value | |||
Metadata, citations and funding via Dimensions.ai (DSL API, © Digital Science); retraction, expression-of-concern and correction events and their dates via the Retraction Watch database, matched to papers by original-article DOI. PubPeer flags and citation counts as recorded in the Dimensions export (Sep 2026). Where Retraction Watch records no distinct event date, the Dimensions date is used as a fallback. This page reports the public record and does not itself allege wrongdoing beyond the recorded editorial actions.
