Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39972033›Full record

ArticleScientific reports2025

Bias in data-driven replicability analysis of univariate brain-wide association studies.

Charles D G Burns, Alessio Fracasso, Guillaume A Rousselet

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing 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

3 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
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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

3 authors.

Charles D G BurnsSchool of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, G12 8QB, Glasgow, Scotland. charlesdgburns@gmail.com.
Alessio FracassoSchool of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, G12 8QB, Glasgow, Scotland.
Guillaume A RousseletSchool of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, G12 8QB, Glasgow, Scotland. Guillaume.Rousselet@glasgow.ac.uk.

Funding

Biotechnology and Biology Research Council BB/S006605/1Fundação Bial A- 29315
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Recent studies have used big neuroimaging datasets to answer an important question: how many subjects are required for reproducible brain-wide association studies? These data-driven approaches could be considered a framework for testing the reproducibility of several neuroimaging models and measures. Here we test part of this framework, namely estimates of statistical errors of univariate brain-behaviour associations obtained from resampling large datasets with replacement. We demonstrate that reported estimates of statistical errors are largely a consequence of bias introduced by random effects when sampling with replacement close to the full sample size. We show that future meta-analyses can largely avoid these biases by only resampling up to 10% of the full sample size. We discuss implications that reproducing mass-univariate association studies requires tens-of-thousands of participants, urging researchers to adopt other methodological approaches.

Indexed as

BrainGenome-Wide Association StudyNeuroimagingBiasHumansReproducibility of Results

Identifiers

PMID39972033
PMCPMC11840108

What OpenQuestion holds

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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.