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Record W4406229301 · doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012711

Eight quick tips for biologically and medically informed machine learning

2025· article· en· W4406229301 on OpenAlexaff
Luca Oneto, Davide Chicco

Bibliographic record

VenuePLoS Computational Biology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldComputer Science
TopicExplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
FundersMinistero dell'Università e della RicercaEuropean CommissionDipartimenti di Eccellenza
KeywordsMachine learningComputer scienceArtificial intelligenceDomain (mathematical analysis)InformaticsHealth informaticsData scienceHealth careEngineering

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Machine learning has become a powerful tool for computational analysis in the biomedical sciences, with its effectiveness significantly enhanced by integrating domain-specific knowledge. This integration has give rise to informed machine learning, in contrast to studies that lack domain knowledge and treat all variables equally (uninformed machine learning). While the application of informed machine learning to bioinformatics and health informatics datasets has become more seamless, the likelihood of errors has also increased. To address this drawback, we present eight guidelines outlining best practices for employing informed machine learning methods in biomedical sciences. These quick tips offer recommendations on various aspects of informed machine learning analysis, aiming to assist researchers in generating more robust, explainable, and dependable results. Even if we originally crafted these eight simple suggestions for novices, we believe they are deemed relevant for expert computational researchers as well.

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 imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.036
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.190
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.036
Threshold uncertainty score0.191

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0360.190
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0030.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.002
Bibliometrics0.0040.002
Science and technology studies0.0030.012
Scholarly communication0.0070.013
Open science0.0040.005
Research integrity0.0100.021
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0230.017

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.

Opus teacher head0.031
GPT teacher head0.304
Teacher spread0.274 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreMethods

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".

Quick stats

Citations8
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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