ArticlePloS one2019
Systematically false positives in early warning signal analysis.
Article in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Early warning signals do not predict a warming-induced experimental epidemic.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Early warning signals for bifurcations embedded in high dimensions.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Enhancing system safety in critical architectures: Augmented hypothesis testing with early design knowledge.PloS one · 2024Article
- Anticipating manic and depressive transitions in patients with bipolar disorder using early warning signals.International journal of bipolar disorders · 2022Article
- Early warning signal reliability varies with COVID-19 waves.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Training LSTM-neural networks on early warning signals of declining cooperation in simulated repeated public good games.MethodsX · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many systems in various scientific fields like medicine, ecology, economics or climate science exhibit so-called critical transitions, through which a system abruptly changes from one state to a different state. Typical examples are epileptic seizures, changes in the climate system or catastrophic shifts in ecosystems. In order to predict imminent critical transitions, a mathematical apparatus called early warning signals has been developed and this method is used successfully in many scientific areas. However, not all critical transitions can be detected by this approach (false negative) and the appearance of early warning signals does not necessarily proof that a critical transition is imminent (false positive). Furthermore, there are whole classes of systems that always show early warning signals, even though they do not feature critical transitions. In this study we identify such classes in order to provide a safeguard against a misinterpretation of the results of an early warning signal analysis of such systems. Furthermore, we discuss strategies to avoid such systematic false positives and test our theoretical insights by applying them to real world data.
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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.