mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Scalable Diffusion SBI for Compositional Inference under Simulator Misspecification

arXiv 2609.36950 ↗First posted 29 Sep 2026cs.LG q-bio.QM stat.MLcited by 0

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Abstract (arXiv)

Simulation-based inference is challenging when many heterogeneous observations must be composed, hierarchical latent structure must be preserved, and the simulator is misspecified relative to observed data. We develop sampling and fine-tuning methods for diffusion-based inference in design-conditional settings, where the same simulator is queried across different experimental conditions xi. We extend compositional score-based inference with a continuous-time diffusion coefficient that accounts for the number of observations, avoiding Jacobian and auxiliary-covariance corrections. We introduce Hierarchical Blockwise Diffusion Sampling (HBDS), which infers shared parameters and group-specific latent states using a single pretrained model, with the hierarchy specified only at sampling time. Together, these methods support variable observation sets and groupings without retraining. To address misspecification, we introduce path-regularized fine-tuning that adapts the learned likelihood to observations and transfers corrections to posterior inference. Using Girsanov's theorem, we quantify path divergence between pretrained and fine-tuned models across experimental designs and interpret it alongside predictive errors to distinguish candidate misspecification correction from unnecessary adaptation. We evaluate compositional sampling on exact-score Gaussian and Simple Likelihood, Complex Posterior benchmarks, HBDS with analytic and learned scores on a controlled hierarchical model, and fine-tuning and localization on a separate analytic model with known design-dependent discrepancy. Finally, we apply the framework to 940 measurements across four cell lines in a mechanistic Bone Morphogenetic Protein signaling model, where fine-tuning improves posterior-predictive accuracy relative to the pretrained model and shifts posterior marginals toward the least-squares reference while retaining spread.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 15 of its 79 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Sep 2026.

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15 of 79 references.

References · 15

  1. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 9,122
  2. 2019The frontier of simulation-based inferencecited by 502
  3. 2023Aligning Text-to-Image Diffusion Models with Reward Backpropagationcited by 288
  4. 2024Fine-Tuning of Continuous-Time Diffusion Models as Entropy-Regularized Controlcited by 143
  5. 2024Understanding Reinforcement Learning-Based Fine-Tuning of Diffusion Models: A Tutorial and Reviewcited by 98
  6. 2022Investigating the Impact of Model Misspecification in Neural Simulation-based Inferencecited by 45
  7. 2024Rethinking Aleatoric and Epistemic Uncertaintycited by 42
  8. 2024Diffusion posterior sampling for simulation-based inference in tall data settingscited by 19
  9. 2025Diffusion Models in Simulation-Based Inference: A Tutorial Reviewcited by 11
  10. 2025Calibrating Generative Models to Distributional Constraintscited by 6
  11. 2025Flow Matching Calibration for Simulation-Based Inference under Model Misspecificationcited by 2
  12. 2026Learning Where to Simulate: Generative Active Sampling for Online PDE Surrogate Trainingcited by 2
3 more
  1. 2026Tokenised Flow Matching for Hierarchical Simulation Based Inferencecited by 1
  2. 2026Theoretical guidelines for annealed Langevin dynamics in compositional simulation-based inferencecited by 1
  3. 2026WTF?! Simulation-Free Reinforcement Learning with Wasserstein-Tilted Flow Mapscited by 1

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  2. 2026Diversify Diffusion with Temperature Sampling and Variance-Corrective Time Shifting
  3. 2024The Superposition of Diffusion Models Using the Ito Density Estimator
  4. 2026Test-Time Compositional Generalization in Diffusion Models via Concept Discovery
  5. 2025PriorGuide: Test-Time Prior Adaptation for Simulation-Based Inference
  6. 2026Catastrophic Compositional Generation: Why Vanilla Diffusion Models Fail to Extrapolate
  7. 2026Spectra: Exact Component Transport for Test-Time Prior Adaptation in Simulation-Based Inference
  8. 2026A Decomposable Probe for Few-Step Diffusion Models: Prompt, Latent, and Score Selectivity across Backbone Families and Distillation Paradigms