Null contact results are often misread as refuting Allport when they actually confirm it.

Evidence

Some research, conducted in situations that do not provide key conditions, uncovers negative effects. Poorly arranged entry of black workers into London’s public transportation, for example, led to hostility by white workers (Brooks 1975). Interracial housing research sometimes reveals few effects on racial attitudes (Bradburn et al 1971, Meer & Freedman 1966, Zuel & Humphrey 1971). These findings support Allport, although some writers mistakenly view their results as falsifying his hypothesis. The erroneous notion that the hypothesis holds that intergroup contact “will of itself produce better relations between…groups” still persists (McGarty & de la Haye 1997, p. 155). — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Intergroup Contact Theory, 23

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how a hypothesis’s conditional structure gets flattened into a naive slogan, then strawmanned with null results — a general scientific-communication failure mode.
• XREF: Mirrors the wider replication debate pattern where conditional theories get tested under non-qualifying conditions and declared dead.