Assessing the Global and Local Uncertainty of Scientific Evidence in the Presence of Model Misspecification
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Scientists need to compare the support for models based on observed phenomena. The main goal of the evidential paradigm is to quantify the strength of evidence in the data for a reference model relative to an alternative model. This is done via an evidence function, such as ΔSIC, an estimator of the sample size scaled difference of divergences between the generating mechanism and the competing models. To use evidence, either for decision making or as a guide to the accumulation of knowledge, an understanding of the uncertainty in the evidence is needed. This uncertainty is well characterized by the standard statistical theory of estimation. Unfortunately, the standard theory breaks down if the models are misspecified, as is commonly the case in scientific studies. We develop non-parametric bootstrap methodologies for estimating the sampling distribution of the evidence estimator under model misspecification. This sampling distribution allows us to determine how secure we are in our evidential statement. We characterize this uncertainty in the strength of evidence with two different types of confidence intervals, which we term “global” and “local.” We discuss how evidence uncertainty can be used to improve scientific inference and illustrate this with a reanalysis of the model identification problem in a prominent landscape ecology study using structural equations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.102 | 0.424 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.018 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".