Evidence of questionable research practices in clinical prediction models

Nicole White, Rex Parsons, Gary Collins & Adrian Barnett. DOI https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-023-03048-6

Background: Clinical prediction models are widely used in health and medical research. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) is a frequently used estimate to describe the discriminatory ability of a clinical prediction model. The AUC is often interpreted relative to thresholds, with “good” or “excellent” models defined at 0.7, 0.8 or 0.9. These thresholds may create targets that result in “hacking”, where researchers are motivated to re-analyse their data until they achieve a “good” result.