Reply to “Concerns About Reproducibility, Use of the Akaike Information Criterion, and Related Issues in Hoondert et al. 2019” and Focus in Developing QSAR‐Based Species Sensitivity Distributions

Abstract

Our exploratory study on the quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR)-based species sensitivity distributions (SSDs)-which boils down to directly deriving SSDs for untested compounds from those of tested compounds (Hoondert et al. 2019)-has been appreciated by Iwasaki and Hayashi (2020). However, they also voice concerns about the statistics used in the study, particularly concerning the improper use of statistical methods and parameters in selecting appropriate models and the reproducibility of outcomes. Herewith we provide our reply to the comments, hoping to clarify our methods and reemphasize the higher aim of the study, which is to help forward this field to maturity.