Dead Fields

The dead field smell occurs when a class or its super classes have fields that are never used by any test method. Often dead fields are inherited. This can indicate a non-optimal inheritance structure, or that the super class conflicts with the single responsibility principle. Also, dead fields within the test class itself can indicate incomplete or deprecated development activities.

Reference

M. Greiler, A. van Deursen, M.-A. D. Storey, “Automated Detection of Test Fixture Strategies and Smells”. ICST 2013, pp. 322–331.