SynthesisPloS one2013
A plea for neutral comparison studies in computational sciences.
Synthesis in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The Association between Emotional Intelligence and Prosocial Behaviors in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2025Pooled it
- A systematic review of simulation studies which compare existing statistical methods to account for non-compliance in randomised controlled trials.BMC medical research methodology · 2023Pooled it
- Overinterpretation of findings in machine learning prediction model studies in oncology: a systematic review.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2023Pooled it
- Deep learning applications for the classification of psychiatric disorders using neuroimaging data: Systematic review and meta-analysis.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2021Pooled it
- Guidelines for benchmarking of optimization-based approaches for fitting mathematical models.Genome biology · 2019Guideline
- A Neutral Comparison of Multivariate Hypothesis Tests for Parallel Group Designs in Rare Disease Settings.Statistics in medicine · 2026Article
- Methods for Adjusting for Covariate Measurement Error in Flexible Modeling of Functional Form: Designing a Blinded, Controlled Neutral Comparison Simulation Study.Biometrical journal. Biometrische Zeitschrift · 2026Article
- A large-scale neutral comparison study of survival models on low-dimensional data.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- The performance of different propensity score methods for estimating the effects of multiple treatments or exposures: a neutral comparison study.BMC medical research methodology · 2026Article
- A comparison of computational methods for expression forecasting.Genome biology · 2025Article
- On "Confirmatory" Methodological Research in Statistics and Related Fields.Statistics in medicine · 2025Article
- Building a continuous benchmarking ecosystem in bioinformatics.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- GHIST 2024: The First Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Application of AI Communication Training Tools in Medical Undergraduate Education: Mixed Methods Feasibility Study Within a Primary Care Context.JMIR medical education · 2025Article
- Anticlustering for sample allocation to minimize batch effects.Cell reports methods · 2025Article
- How to quantify between-study heterogeneity in single-arm evidence synthesis?-It depends!Systematic reviews · 2025Article
- Comparison of methods to handle missing values in a continuous index test in a diagnostic accuracy study - a simulation study.BMC medical research methodology · 2025Article
- Characterizing the omics landscape based on 10,000+ datasets.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- calibmsm: An R package for calibration plots of the transition probabilities in a multistate model.PloS one · 2025Article
- A bioinformatician, computer scientist, and geneticist lead bioinformatic tool development-which one is better?Bioinformatics advances · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In computational science literature including, e.g., bioinformatics, computational statistics or machine learning, most published articles are devoted to the development of "new methods", while comparison studies are generally appreciated by readers but surprisingly given poor consideration by many journals. This paper stresses the importance of neutral comparison studies for the objective evaluation of existing methods and the establishment of standards by drawing parallels with clinical research. The goal of the paper is twofold. Firstly, we present a survey of recent computational papers on supervised classification published in seven high-ranking computational science journals. The aim is to provide an up-to-date picture of current scientific practice with respect to the comparison of methods in both articles presenting new methods and articles focusing on the comparison study itself. Secondly, based on the results of our survey we critically discuss the necessity, impact and limitations of neutral comparison studies in computational sciences. We define three reasonable criteria a comparison study has to fulfill in order to be considered as neutral, and explicate general considerations on the individual components of a "tidy neutral comparison study". R codes for completely replicating our statistical analyses and figures are available from the companion website http://www.ibe.med.uni-muenchen.de/organisation/mitarbeiter/020_professuren/boulesteix/plea2013.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.