The Ellipse of Insignificance, a refined fragility indexfor ascertaining robustness of results indichotomous outcome trials
- Dublin City University, Ireland
Abstract
There is increasing awareness throughout biomedical science that many results do not withstand the trials of repeat investigation. The growing abundance of medical literature has only increased the urgent need for tools to gauge the robustness and trustworthiness of published science. Dichotomous outcome designs are vital in randomized clinical trials, cohort studies, and observational data for ascertaining differences between experimental and control arms. It has however been shown with tools like the fragility index (FI) that many ostensibly impactful results fail to materialise when even small numbers of patients or subjects in either the control or experimental arms are recoded from event to non-event. Critics of this metric counter that there is no objective means to determine a meaningful FI. As currently used, FI is not multi-dimensional and is computationally expensive. In this work a conceptually similar geometrical approach is introduced, the ellipse of insignificance (EOI). This method yields precise deterministic values for the degree of manipulation or miscoding that can be tolerated simultaneously in both control and experimental arms, allowing for the derivation of objective measures of experimental robustness. More than this, the tool is intimately connected with sensitivity and specificity of the event / non-event tests, and is readily combined with knowledge of test parameters to reject unsound results. The method is outlined here, with illustrative clinical examples.
Data availability
The paper is a modelling study and methodology and contains no data, and code provided in the supplementary material allows reproduction of all methods.
Article and author information
Author details
David Robert Grimes
Funding
Wellcome Trust (214461/A/18/Z)
- David Robert Grimes
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Philip Boonstra, University of Michigan, United States
Version history
- Preprint posted: March 28, 2022 (view preprint)
- Received: April 19, 2022
- Accepted: September 13, 2022
- Accepted Manuscript published: September 20, 2022 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: October 21, 2022 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2022, Grimes
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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The Ellipse of Insignificance, a refined fragility indexfor ascertaining robustness of results indichotomous outcome trials
eLife 11:e79573.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79573
Further reading
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- Epidemiology and Global Health
Background:
Circulating omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) have been associated with various chronic diseases and mortality, but results are conflicting. Few studies examined the role of omega-6/omega-3 ratio in mortality.
Methods:
We investigated plasma omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs and their ratio in relation to all-cause and cause-specific mortality in a large prospective cohort, the UK Biobank. Of 85,425 participants who had complete information on circulating PUFAs, 6461 died during follow-up, including 2794 from cancer and 1668 from cardiovascular disease (CVD). Associations were estimated by multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression with adjustment for relevant risk factors.
Results:
Risk for all three mortality outcomes increased as the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 PUFAs increased (all Ptrend <0.05). Comparing the highest to the lowest quintiles, individuals had 26% (95% CI, 15–38%) higher total mortality, 14% (95% CI, 0–31%) higher cancer mortality, and 31% (95% CI, 10–55%) higher CVD mortality. Moreover, omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs in plasma were all inversely associated with all-cause, cancer, and CVD mortality, with omega-3 showing stronger effects.
Conclusions:
Using a population-based cohort in UK Biobank, our study revealed a strong association between the ratio of circulating omega-6/omega-3 PUFAs and the risk of all-cause, cancer, and CVD mortality.
Funding:
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institute of Health under the award number R35GM143060 (KY). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
