Quantitative Biology > Quantitative Methods
[Submitted on 20 Sep 2025
]
Title: Comment on "mbtransfer: Microbiome intervention analysis using transfer functions and mirror statistics": Implementation errors, theoretical misapplication, and methodological flaws
Title: 对“mbtransfer：使用转移函数和镜像统计进行微生物组干预分析”的评论：实现错误、理论误用和方法学缺陷
Abstract: There are a number of errors in "mbtransfer: Microbiome intervention analysis using transfer functions and mirror statistics" PLOS Comp Bio (2024) spanning multiple aspects of the paper. The wrong inputs were provided to comparator methods for model training, when forecasting one method was provided initial conditions in the wrong units, and performance metrics were calculated without proper unit conversion. The false discovery rate and power analysis conclusions provided in the text are not supported by theory or the empirical testing that was performed within the paper. The paper also has data leakage issues, equations are written down incorrectly, and incorrect definitions/terminology are used.
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