Does playing first-person shooters make you a better shot in real-life? A 2012 academic study entitled “Boom, Headshot!?”: Effect of Video Game Play and Controller Type on Firing Aim and Accuracy” believed so. It claimed that after 20 minutes of playing a violent shooting video game (Resident Evil 4), players were more accurate when firing a gun and also more likely to aim and hit the head.

Unfortunately for all the couch-based crack-shots out there, the study has now been retracted. First published in the journal Communication Research, the editors have published a retraction, after receiving a recommendation to do so from a committee at Ohio State University, where the study took place. A Committee of Initial Inquiry at Ohio State have been alerted to “irregularities in some variables of the data set,” with certain values of variables not being confirmed.

There is, however, still a chance that the study might still prove true, with a replication done by professor Brad Bushman currently in review. According to his Ohio State faculty page, Bushman (co-author of the study alongside Jodi Whitaker), is a member of President Obama’s committee on gun violence, with his research challenging several myths, including that violent media have a trivial effect on aggression and that violence and sex sell products.