2604.00905 Empirical Characterization of the "Harmonization-Dominance" Failure Mode: A Batch-Distortion Penalty Framework for Alzheimer's Research
Cross-cohort Alzheimer's disease (AD) blood transcriptomic prediction is sensitive to batch effects introduced during dataset harmonization. Standard pipelines treat batch correction and feature selection as independent steps, allowing features that required extreme mathematical rescuing during harmonization to dominate predictive models—a phenomenon we characterize as the **"Harmonization-Dominance" Failure Mode**.