ReviewNature ecology & evolution2022
Improving quantitative synthesis to achieve generality in ecology.
Review in Nature ecology & evolution, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A robust and readily implementable method for the meta-analysis of response ratios with and without missing standard deviations.Ecology letters · 2023Pooled it
- Interpretable and Predictive Models Based on High-Dimensional Data in Ecology and Evolution.Molecular ecology resources · 2026Article
- Fifty Years Later, and We Still Don't Know About Badges of Status.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Location-scale models and cross validation to advance quantitative evidence synthesis.Ecology · 2026Article
- Towards a unified approach to formal "risk of bias" assessments for causal and descriptive inference.Quality & quantity · 2026Article
- Causal machine learning methods for understanding land use and land cover change.Landscape ecology · 2026Review
- Harnessing meta-analyses' insights in ecology and evolution research.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- The influence of native shrub density on bird communities in the southern drylands of California, USA.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Expanding theory, methodology and empirical systems at the spatial-social interface.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Assessing patterns of eavesdropper risk on sexual signals and the use of meta-analysis in behavioural ecology: a comment on: 'The exploitation of sexual signals by predators: a meta-analysis' WhiteProceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Quantitative evidence synthesis: a practical guide on meta-analysis, meta-regression, and publication bias tests for environmental sciences.Environmental evidence · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Synthesis of primary ecological data is often assumed to achieve a notion of 'generality', through the quantification of overall effect sizes and consistency among studies, and has become a dominant research approach in ecology. Unfortunately, ecologists rarely define either the generality of their findings, their estimand (the target of estimation) or the population of interest. Given that generality is fundamental to science, and the urgent need for scientific understanding to curb global scale ecological breakdown, loose usage of the term 'generality' is problematic. In other disciplines, generality is defined as comprising both generalizability-extending an inference about an estimand from the sample to the population-and transferability-the validity of estimand predictions in a different sampling unit or population. We review current practice in ecological synthesis and demonstrate that, when researchers fail to define the assumptions underpinning generalizations and transfers of effect sizes, generality often misses its target. We provide guidance for communicating nuanced inferences and maximizing the impact of syntheses both within and beyond academia. We propose pathways to generality applicable to ecological syntheses, including the development of quantitative and qualitative criteria with which to license the transfer of estimands from both primary and synthetic studies.
Identifiers
36329352What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.