Faulty modeling studies led to overstated predictions of Ebola outbreak

Last September, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated—based on computer modeling—that Liberia and Sierra Leone could see up to 1.4 million Ebola cases by January 2015 if the viral disease kept spreading without effective methods to contain it. Belatedly, the international community stepped up efforts to control the outbreak, and the explosive growth slowed.

"Those predictions proved to be wrong, and it was not only because of the successful intervention in West Africa," King said. "It's also because the methods people were using to make the forecasts were inappropriate."

In a paper scheduled for online publication March 31 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, King and his colleagues suggest several straightforward and inexpensive ways to avoid those pitfalls when the next big infectious disease outbreak strikes. Their suggestions pertain to disease transmission models, sophisticated systems of equations that use data from the early stages of an outbreak to predict how it will unfold....