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Analysis uncovers shortcomings of the bidirectional fragility index and highlights the global fragility index's improvements and advantages.
The bidirectional fragility index (bFI) for 2×2 contingency tables improves upon the unidirectional fragility index but retains significant structural limitations: (1) it restricts perturbations to within-arm toggles (fixed row margins), which is a subset of the full perturbation space; (2) it is mathematically incomplete (not attainable for some valid tables); and (3) it conflates classification stability with robustness. The Global Fragility Index (GFI) resolves the first two limitations by searching all cell-to-cell reallocations without fixing any marginal totals. Exhaustive enumeration of all valid 2×2 tables (N = 7–30, 45,230 tables) confirms that GFI ≤ bFI always, GFI < bFI in 21.5% of cases, and GFI is attainable for every table in the domain. The Risk Quotient (RQ) addresses the third limitation by providing a normalized robustness metric orthogonal to fragility. Citation: Heston TF. Bidirectional fragility is a step forward but not far enough: the case for a global fragility index. Internet Medical Journal. 2026;1:e19464166
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Thomas F Heston (2026) studied this question.
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