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Investigating the Impact of Model Misspecification in Neural Simulation-based Inference

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arxiv 2209.01845 v1 pith:LLCEVRBH submitted 2022-09-05 stat.ML cs.LGstat.CO

classification stat.MLcs.LGstat.CO
keywords misspecificationmodelneuralalgorithmsinferenceaccuratebeenbehaviour
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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Aided by advances in neural density estimation, considerable progress has been made in recent years towards a suite of simulation-based inference (SBI) methods capable of performing flexible, black-box, approximate Bayesian inference for stochastic simulation models. While it has been demonstrated that neural SBI methods can provide accurate posterior approximations, the simulation studies establishing these results have considered only well-specified problems -- that is, where the model and the data generating process coincide exactly. However, the behaviour of such algorithms in the case of model misspecification has received little attention. In this work, we provide the first comprehensive study of the behaviour of neural SBI algorithms in the presence of various forms of model misspecification. We find that misspecification can have a profoundly deleterious effect on performance. Some mitigation strategies are explored, but no approach tested prevents failure in all cases. We conclude that new approaches are required to address model misspecification if neural SBI algorithms are to be relied upon to derive accurate scientific conclusions.

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. OpenAlex reports about 12 citations worldwide. Full citation record

  1. Neural Posterior Estimation for Inferring Weak Lensing Shear

    astro-ph.IM 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Neural posterior estimation recovers accurate, well-calibrated constant-shear posteriors from simulated multiband images that include blending, variable PSFs, stars, and detector artifacts.

  2. Flow Matching Calibration for Simulation-Based Inference under Model Misspecification

    stat.ML 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    FMCPE trains a flow-matching correction that transports samples from a simulation-based posterior estimator toward the true posterior, using only tens to hundreds of ground-truth calibration pairs.

  3. A Calibration Audit of a Gaia XP White-Dwarf Main-Sequence Binary Catalog: How Much BP-Band Residual it Takes to Manufacture Contamination

    astro-ph.IM 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.5 of 10

    At the realistic ~2% local BP residual, injected contamination of a Gaia XP WD–MS binary selection is a null (spurious rate 0.08 on a 0.05 baseline); failure requires 10–20% local excess.

  4. Mitigating Model Misspecification in Simulation-Based Inference for Galaxy Clustering

    astro-ph.CO 2025-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A two-step method (coefficient pruning plus learned robust transformation) fixes model misspecification in the SimBIG wavelet-scattering analysis of BOSS galaxy clustering and produces tight Lambda-CDM constraints.

  5. An Introduction to Bayesian and Frequentist Simulation-Based Inference with Machine Learning

    cs.LG 2026-07 accept novelty 2.0 of 10

    A structured introduction to ML-based simulation-based inference, contrasting Bayesian and frequentist frameworks and covering parameter inference, unfolding, and validation.

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