Evidence map›Paper›PMID 32213177›Full record

ArticleBMC medicine2020

Born to fail: flaws in replication design produce intended results.

Abraham D Flaxman, Riley Hazard, Ian Riley, Alan D Lopez, Christopher J L Murray

Open access · goldAbstract readComment
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in BMC medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact, top 97% of its field
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

0 citing papers in PubMed, 0 citations in OpenAlex.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Abraham D FlaxmanInstitute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, 2301 5th Avenue Suite 600, Seattle, WA, 98121, USA. abie@uw.edu.ORCID 0000-0001-6033-4713
Riley HazardMelbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia.
Ian RileyMelbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia.
Alan D LopezMelbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia.
Christopher J L MurrayInstitute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, 2301 5th Avenue Suite 600, Seattle, WA, 98121, USA.
The University of Melbourne · AUUniversity of Washington · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

We recently published in BMC Medicine an evaluation of the comparative diagnostic performance of InSilicoVA, a software to map the underlying causes of death from verbal autopsy interviews. The developers of this software claim to have failed to replicate our results and appear to have also failed to locate our replication archive for this work. In this Correspondence, we provide feedback on how this might have been done more usefully and offer some suggestions to improve future attempts at reproducible research. We also offer an alternative interpretation of the results presented by Li et al., namely that, out of 100 verbal autopsy interviews, InSilicoVA will, at best, correctly identify the underlying cause of death in 40 cases and incorrectly in 60 - a markedly inferior performance to alternative existing approaches.

Indexed as

EthnicitySoftwareAutopsyCause of DeathHumansLithiumLithiumInSilicoVAReproducible researchTariffVerbal autopsy

Identifiers

PMID32213177
PMCPMC7098125
OpenAlexW3013347128

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.