Bridging the big (data) gap: levels of control in small- and large-scale cognitive neuroscience research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recently, cognitive neuroscience has experienced unprecedented growth in the availability of large-scale datasets. These developments hold great methodological and theoretical promise: they allow increased statistical power, the use of nonparametric and generative models, the examination of individual differences, and more. Nevertheless, unlike most 'traditional' cognitive neuroscience research, which uses controlled experimental designs, large-scale projects often collect neuroimaging data not directly related to a particular task (e.g., resting state). This creates a gap between small- and large-scale studies that is not solely due to differences in sample size. Measures obtained with large-scale studies might tap into different neurocognitive mechanisms and thus show little overlap with the mechanisms probed by small-scale studies. In this opinion article, we aim to address this gap and its potential implications for the interpretation of research findings in cognitive neuroscience.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.007 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.002 |
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".