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The importance of making testable predictions: A cautionary tale.

ABSTRACT: We found a startling correlation (Pearson ? > 0.97) between a single event in daily sea surface temperatures each spring, and peak fish egg abundance measurements the following summer, in 7 years of approximately weekly fish egg abundance data collected at Scripps Pier in La Jolla California. Even more surprising was that this event-based result persisted despite the large and variable number of fish species involved (up to 46), and the large and variable time interval between trigger and response (up to ~3 months). To mitigate potential over-fitting, we made an out-of-sample prediction beyond the publication process for the peak summer egg abundance observed at Scripps Pier in 2020 (available on bioRxiv). During peer-review, the prediction failed, and while it would be tempting to explain this away as a result of the record-breaking toxic algal bloom that occurred during the spring (9x higher concentration of dinoflagellates than ever previously recorded), a re-examination of our methodology revealed a potential source of over-fitting that had not been evaluated for robustness. This cautionary tale highlights the importance of testable true out-of-sample predictions of future values that cannot (even accidentally) be used in model fitting, and that can therefore catch model assumptions that may otherwise escape notice. We believe that this example can benefit the current push towards ecology as a predictive science and support the notion that predictions should live and die in the public domain, along with the models that made them.

SUBMITTER: Choi ES

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7723288 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The importance of making testable predictions: A cautionary tale.

Choi Emma S ES Saberski Erik E Lorimer Tom T Smith Cameron C Kandage-Don Unduwap U Burton Ronald S RS Sugihara George G

PloS one 20201208 12

We found a startling correlation (Pearson ρ > 0.97) between a single event in daily sea surface temperatures each spring, and peak fish egg abundance measurements the following summer, in 7 years of approximately weekly fish egg abundance data collected at Scripps Pier in La Jolla California. Even more surprising was that this event-based result persisted despite the large and variable number of fish species involved (up to 46), and the large and variable time interval between trigger and respon ...[more]

PMID: 33290401

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Project description:FURIN is a pro-protein convertase previously shown to be important for placental syncytialisation (Zhou et al. [1]), a process of cell fusion whereby placental cytotrophoblast cells fuse to form a multinucleated syncytium. This finding has been broadly accepted however, we have evidence suggesting the contrary. Spontaneously syncytialising term primary human trophoblast cells and BeWo choriocarcinoma cells were treated with either FURIN siRNA or negative control siRNA or the protease inhibitor, DEC-RVKR-CMK, or vehicle. Cells were then left to either spontaneously syncytialise (primary trophoblasts) or were induced to syncytialise with forskolin (BeWo). Effects on syncytialisation were measured by determining human chorionic gonadotrophin secretion and E-cadherin protein levels. We showed that FURIN is not important for syncytialisation in either cell type. However, in primary trophoblasts another protease also inhibited by DEC-RVKR-CMK, may be involved. Our results directly contrast with those published by Zhou et al. Zhou et al. however, used first trimester villous explants to study syncytialisation, and we used term primary trophoblasts. Therefore, we suggest that FURIN may be involved in syncytialisation of first trimester trophoblasts, but not term trophoblasts. What is more concerning is that our results using BeWo cells do not agree with their results, even though for the most part, we used the same experimental design. It is unclear why these experiments yielded different results, however we wanted to draw attention to simple differences in measuring syncytialisation or flaws in method reporting (including omission of cell line source and passage numbers, siRNA concentration and protein molecular weights) and choice of immunoblot loading controls, that could impact on experimental outcomes. Our study shows that careful reporting of methods by authors and thorough scrutiny by referees are vital. Furthermore, a universal benchmark for measuring syncytialisation is required so that various studies of syncytialisation can be validated.

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The importance of making testable predictions: A cautionary tale.

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The importance of making testable predictions: A cautionary tale.

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