ArticlePsychology and aging2022
Data overuse in aging research: Emerging issues and potential solutions.
Article in Psychology and aging, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A systematic review of air pollution exposure and brain structure and function during development.Environmental research · 2025Pooled it
- Associations between indicators of self-rated health, cognitive function, risk of cognitive impairment, and dementia: a coordinated data analysis.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- Depression and cognition: is there a bidirectional relationship?Aging & mental health · 2026Article
- A Taxonomy of Data Synthesis.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2026Article
- Does type or diversity of activities delay aging-related cognitive decline?Innovation in aging · 2026Article
- Challenges and opportunities of psychological aging research.European journal of ageing · 2025Review
- Is There a Link Between Older Adults' Frequency of (Face-to-Face and Remote) Contact With Grandchildren and Cognitive Functioning Over 12 Years?The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2025Article
- Sleep moderates how prenatal and childhood pollutant exposure impacts white matter microstructural integrity in adolescence.Npj biological timing and sleep · 2025Article
- A Systematic Review of Air Pollution Exposure and Brain Structure and Function during Development.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- A Coordinated Data Analysis of Four Studies Exploring Age Differences in Social Interactions and Loneliness During a Global Pandemic.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2024Article
- Particulate Matter Exposure and Default Mode Network Equilibrium During Early Adolescence.Brain connectivity · 2024Article
- Prenatal and childhood air pollution exposure, cellular immune biomarkers, and brain connectivity in early adolescents.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2024Article
- Do We Become More Lonely With Age? A Coordinated Data Analysis of Nine Longitudinal Studies.Psychological science · 2024Article
- Global rural health disparities in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias: State of the science.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2023Review
- Socioeconomic disadvantage, chronic stress, and proinflammatory phenotype: an integrative data analysis across the lifecourse.PNAS nexus · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Aging and lifespan development researchers have been fortunate to have public access to many longitudinal datasets. These data are valuable and see high utilization, yet this has a considerable downside. Many of these are heavily overused. Overuse of publicly available datasets creates dependency among published research papers giving the false impression of independent contributions to knowledge by reporting the same associations over multiple papers. This is a potentially serious problem in the aging literature given the high use of a relatively small number of well-known studies. Any irregularities or sampling biases in this relatively small number of samples have outsize influence on perceived answers to key aging questions. We detail this problem, focusing on issues of dependency among studies, sampling bias and overfitting, and contradictory estimates of the same effect from the same data in independent publications. We provide solutions, including greater use of data sharing, pre-registrations, holdout samples, split-sample cross-validation, and coordinated analysis. We argue these valuable datasets are public resources that are being diminished by overuse, with parallels in environmental science. Taking a conservation perspective, we hold that these practices (pre-registration, holdout samples) can preserve data resources for future generations of researchers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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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.