Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39874452›Full record

ArticleBioinformatics (Oxford, England)2025

Robustly interrogating machine learning-based scoring functions: what are they learning?

Guy Durant, Fergus Boyles, Kristian Birchall, Brian Marsden, Charlotte M Deane

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Bioinformatics (Oxford, England), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
14citing 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

14 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
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  10. MolSnapper: Conditioning Diffusion for Structure-Based Drug Design.Journal of chemical information and modeling · 2025
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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

5 authors.

Guy DurantDepartment of Statistics, University of Oxford, St Giles', Oxford OX1 3LB, United Kingdom.ORCID 0009-0007-3249-3793
Fergus BoylesDepartment of Statistics, University of Oxford, St Giles', Oxford OX1 3LB, United Kingdom.ORCID 0000-0002-4185-1229
Kristian BirchallLifeArc, Stevenage SG1 2FX, United Kingdom.ORCID 0000-0001-9992-2555
Brian MarsdenNuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7BN, United Kingdom.ORCID 0000-0002-1937-4091
Charlotte M DeaneDepartment of Statistics, University of Oxford, St Giles', Oxford OX1 3LB, United Kingdom.ORCID 0000-0003-1388-2252

Funding

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council EP/S024093/1
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

motivationMachine learning-based scoring functions (MLBSFs) have been found to exhibit inconsistent performance on different benchmarks and be prone to learning dataset bias. For the field to develop MLBSFs that learn a generalizable understanding of physics, a more rigorous understanding of how they perform is required.

resultsIn this work, we compared the performance of a diverse set of popular MLBSFs (RFScore, SIGN, OnionNet-2, Pafnucy, and PointVS) to our proposed baseline models that can only learn dataset biases on a range of benchmarks. We found that these baseline models were competitive in accuracy to these MLBSFs in almost all proposed benchmarks, indicating these models only learn dataset biases. Our tests and provided platform, ToolBoxSF, will enable researchers to robustly interrogate MLBSF performance and determine the effect of dataset biases on their predictions. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: https://github.com/guydurant/toolboxsf.

Indexed as

Computational BiologyMachine LearningAlgorithms

Identifiers

PMID39874452
PMCPMC11821266

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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.