Journal article
Variability in the analysis of a single neuroimaging dataset by many teams
- Abstract:
- Data analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and flexible. Here we assess the effect of this flexibility on the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging by asking 70 independent teams to analyse the same dataset, testing the same 9 ex-ante hypotheses. The flexibility of analytical approaches is exemplified by the fact that no two teams chose identical workflows to analyse the data. This flexibility resulted in sizeable variation in the results of hypothesis tests, even for teams whose statistical maps were highly correlated at intermediate stages of the analysis pipeline. Variation in reported results was related to several aspects of analysis methodology. Notably, a meta-analytical approach that aggregated information across teams yielded a significant consensus in activated regions. Furthermore, prediction markets of researchers in the field revealed an overestimation of the likelihood of significant findings, even by researchers with direct knowledge of the dataset. Our findings show that analytical flexibility can have substantial effects on scientific conclusions, and identify factors that may be related to variability in the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results emphasize the importance of validating and sharing complex analysis workflows, and demonstrate the need for performing and reporting multiple analyses of the same data. Potential approaches that could be used to mitigate issues related to analytical variability are discussed.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 205.2KB, Terms of use)
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(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 3.3MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41586-020-2314-9
Authors
+ Wellcome Trust
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/029chgv08
- Grant:
- 100309/Z/12/Z
- Publisher:
- Nature Research
- Journal:
- Nature More from this journal
- Volume:
- 582
- Issue:
- 7810
- Pages:
- 84-88
- Publication date:
- 2020-05-20
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-04-07
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1476-4687
- ISSN:
-
0028-0836
- Pmid:
-
32483374
- Language:
-
English
- Subjects:
- Pubs id:
-
1107754
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1107754
- Deposit date:
-
2020-07-06
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Botvinik-Nezer et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Rights statement:
- © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
- Notes:
- This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is available online from Nature Research at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2314-9
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