Evidence map›Paper›PMID 30796206›Full record

ArticleNature communications2019

On the predictability of infectious disease outbreaks.

Samuel V Scarpino, Giovanni Petri

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 89 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
89citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

89 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
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  7. Uncovering heterogeneous intercommunity disease transmission from neutral allele frequency time series.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
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  11. The dynamics ofmSphere · 2025
    Article
  12. Revealing unseen dynamical regimes of ecosystems from population time-series data.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Review
  18. Article
  19. District-Level Forecast of Achieving Trachoma Elimination as a Public Health Problem By 2030: An Ensemble Modelling Approach.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2024
    Article
  20. Article

29 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Samuel V ScarpinoNetwork Science Institute, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA. s.scarpino@northeastern.edu.
Giovanni PetriISI Foundation, 10126, Turin, Italy. giovanni.petri@isi.it.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-5031

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Infectious disease outbreaks recapitulate biology: they emerge from the multi-level interaction of hosts, pathogens, and environment. Therefore, outbreak forecasting requires an integrative approach to modeling. While specific components of outbreaks are predictable, it remains unclear whether fundamental limits to outbreak prediction exist. Here, adopting permutation entropy as a model independent measure of predictability, we study the predictability of a diverse collection of outbreaks and identify a fundamental entropy barrier for disease time series forecasting. However, this barrier is often beyond the time scale of single outbreaks, implying prediction is likely to succeed. We show that forecast horizons vary by disease and that both shifting model structures and social network heterogeneity are likely mechanisms for differences in predictability. Our results highlight the importance of embracing dynamic modeling approaches, suggest challenges for performing model selection across long time series, and may relate more broadly to the predictability of complex adaptive systems.

Indexed as

Models, StatisticalDisease OutbreaksDisease Transmission, InfectiousForecastingHumansModels, Biological

Identifiers

PMID30796206
PMCPMC6385200

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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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.