Talk:Brian Wansink

Review
This topic should remain. Additional material has been placed in the article to "round out" the description of the person. Brian Wansink is a very well known academic in the fields of consumer behavior, marketing, psychology, behavioral medicine, and food & nutritional science. This topic is also important because it represents the first significant advance into the psychology of food consumption. As verification of the importance of this topic, Brian Wansink's work has recently been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, Time Magazine (Oct. 16th W10), 20/20 news magazine, countless associated press articles, and other media outlets. His research into food psychology has been published by some of the top academic journals including JAMA, British Medical Journal, Annual Review of Nutrition, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science. The article makes a nice addition to the general knowledge base of Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.236.38.61 (talk • contribs) 11:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

It is not an advertisement, but a good description of an important person whose contributions to the health of the nation are appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.92.255.191 (talk • contribs) 09:35, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

"whose contributions to the health of the nation are appreciated" - what a joke, twelve years later. Study after study has been challenged and even withdrawn. It is dismaying that this publicity-hound is still employed by a major institution.23.113.53.110 (talk) 03:53, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is not a soapbox, IP user.--FeralOink (talk) 14:10, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Editorial structure
Per MOS:LEAD, "Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article." Right now, the second paragraph includes recent criticism of Wasink's research. However, there is no discussion or coverage of that criticism in the body of the article. This is poor editorial structure and should be addressed. Criticism should be covered in proportion to its due weight in the body, and then summarized in the lede. We shouldn't just plunk down a paragraph of criticism in the second paragraph of the article when there is no further coverage of it in the rest of the article. Marquardtika (talk) 20:04, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * (For reference: We are talking about this edit, which BTW also introduced a factual error, as noted here.)
 * What you say is true per se, but MOS:LEAD also says that the lede should "summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies". Removing any mention of the investigation results from the intro and confining it a section towards the very end of the text was a disservice to the reader and even less desirable than temporarily having content in the lede that is not expanded on in greater detail later.
 * Regards, HaeB (talk) 01:43, 15 March 2017 (UTC)


 * This edit fully addresses my concerns. Thank you, ! Marquardtika (talk) 15:38, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Bizarre accusations in edit summaries
I'm sorry if you view everything as a personal attack because you have developed such a contentious relationship with every other editor on Wikipedia, but edit summaries are not to be used to attack people. Since your accusations were in an edit summary for this page, I'll post my response on this talk page. I did not follow you to this page. You can see my other edits in similar topics spanning a length of time. I did not revert you, I corrected a word that the authors specifically state is an inaccurate way to describe them. Natureium (talk) 18:01, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Xinci editing
I'm sorry why I cannot see the file mindless eating anymore. but I have some information for the page. User:Liuxinci/My sandbox final product
 * There are many levels here.
 * First, you added content in this diff to Mindless eating, which never was an article, but was instead what we call a "redirect" - an alternative name. The actual page was at Mindless Eating (capital "e").  However that page, like many pages from the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, were horrible spam and we have reduced almost all of them and redirected them here. (that page used to look like this)
 * Trying to add more content about any of those projects is a bad idea at this time.  See the discussion about the history of promotional, conflict-of-interest editing here, at Wikipedia's notice board for these matters. Jytdog (talk) 22:01, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Linking Wansink's response
We have a dispute about whether we should include, as a reference, Wansink's response. In general we should avoid citing primary sources, and rely instead on secondary sources. I just noticed that we include the primary and also self-published source from the group that originally critiqued the work. I propose that we move that, and Wansink's response, to a further reading section, since we should use neither as a reference. I'll do that now. Is this OK? Jytdog (talk) 16:34, 12 May 2018 (UTC)


 * clarity and order will do this page only good.
 * Its complicated in this case. Because there are not many secondary sources, and most are fuzzy / unreliable. So I personally feel better about just primary, just to avoid adding insult to the mess injury. (PS. I have this on my watchlist, hence the suspicious timing, as every edit reminds me of the page ;) )Jazi Zilber (talk) 16:48, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * If there are some facts stated in the article that you understand are not accurate, please post about them. In general what we do here is summarize secondary sources. I have no interest in, and will not engage in much discussion about, critiquing the secondary sources based on the primary sources. That is not what we do here. Wikipedia is not about what editor is smarter; we just summarize secondary sources. Higher quality secondary sources are always welcome. :) Jytdog (talk) 16:55, 12 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Hello, Jytdog and YechezkelZilber. A source that satisfies WP:NPOV, and is widley respected, is Andrew Gelman, Harvard PhD in statistics and professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University. He has written quite a lot about Wansink as the sad story unfolded. He is not a part of the VanDerZee-Traens-Jordan troika, nor Heatherton, the academic who did the Joy of Cooking repudiation. Gelman is a secondary source and comes to similar conclusions about Wansink's work, but from a, well, once-removed point of view. The problem is that his website, "Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science", might be considered a blog, which we don't usually accept. The results of a search on Wansink on Gelman's site should give you a sense of how he writes. Gelman was sympathetic to Wansink initially, before the evidence started pouring in. Although it is nominally a blog, Gelman provides a diverse and credible list of sponsors, although I don't know if that refers to the blog itself or his research grants. What are your thoughts on this? I can pull a few relevant posts from Gelman to replace some of the primary sources in the article at present. We have reduced the article's dependence on Buzzfeed as a source, I am happy to notice!--FeralOink (talk) 15:35, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow thanks for that. Gelman's postings were really useful for understanding that the issues were deeper -- no theory + noisy data + bad statistics, but even more importantly, "conclusions" pulled out of thin air. this post and this post were especially helpful. In my view these are too bloggy to be accepted by the community as sources in a WP:BLP article.  I can post at WP:RSN if you would like further input but the WP:BLPSPS policy is held to pretty strongly.Jytdog (talk) 16:38, 14 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I see Gelman as a blog. Buzzfeed is a primary source regarding p-hacking. buzzfeed sourced the emails and analyzed them. I am not seeing straight up statements on p-hacking, except in buzzfeed article. I do not think we have clear evidence for p-hacking satisfying an inclusion for BLP. Heathers himself told me he isn't sure there was intentional p-hacking, only that "Wansink somehow managed to get enormously sloppy work done and utterly unreliable results etc." (citation is not verbatim). Jazi Zilber (talk) 17:49, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

How to handle "Cornell Food and Brand Lab"
I am unable to find any on-line evidence that the "Cornell Food and Brand Lab" is extant. Its inclusion in the lede seems to me WP:UNDUE if not actually misleading, as it might be interpreted to imply that a research group "branded," if you will, with Wansink's research misconduct continues to operate at the university. Should its mention be removed, or should something like "now defunct" or "since terminated" be appended? JoJo Anthrax (talk) 15:22, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The current wording is in the past tense, so I don't quite see how it could imply that the lab continues to operate: [Wansink] held the John S. Dyson Endowed Chair in the Applied Economics and Management Department at Cornell University, where he directed the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.
 * That said, it would indeed be good to add "now defunct" or "since terminated" if we can find a reference for that.
 * Regards, HaeB (talk) 02:08, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Wansink's association with this lab is explicitly presented in the past tense, but that does not logically imply that the lab is (or isn't) defunct. And despite numerous searches online to verify, with reliable sources, the nonexistence of the Brand Lab, I have run into the old chestnut that one can't prove a negative. There is, however, no post-2018 evidence to confirm the lab's existence. This really isn't a big deal of course, I am simply striving to resolve undue ambiguity. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 19:23, 17 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Might be right. But I think we should not be trying to be that precise for a semi implication of a sentence.
 * We do not have currently definite info that the lab is shut down, albeit it seems to be. And we might not want to make sentences unbearably longer for exactitude.
 * This is merely my wiki editing view, nothing to disagree with your points otherwise.... Jazi Zilber (talk) 17:07, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

National Mindless Eating Challenge
National Mindless Eating Challenge redirects here but isn't mentioned in the article. Would a mention be a useful addition, or should the redirect be deleted? – Arms & Hearts (talk) 16:27, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

"National Mindless Eating Challenge" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect National Mindless Eating Challenge. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 13 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 23:04, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

bottomless soup study
it has recently been successfully replicated in a highly powered, preregistred study, altho with effect sizes being about half. .

there were all kinds of doubts about this experiment like many of his other studies, but I don't recall the precise details.

I think this is an important piece of the story very much with mentioning.

here's the issues with the soup study Jazi Zilber (talk) 12:13, 4 November 2023 (UTC)