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Between two stools: preclinical research, reproducibility, and statistical design of experiments

Translation of animal-based preclinical research is hampered by poor validity and reproducibility issues. Unfortunately, preclinical research has ‘fallen between the stools’ of competing study design traditions. Preclinical studies are often characterised by small sample sizes, large variability, an...

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Autor principal: Reynolds, Penny S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8862533/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35189946
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13104-022-05965-w
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author Reynolds, Penny S.
author_facet Reynolds, Penny S.
author_sort Reynolds, Penny S.
collection PubMed
description Translation of animal-based preclinical research is hampered by poor validity and reproducibility issues. Unfortunately, preclinical research has ‘fallen between the stools’ of competing study design traditions. Preclinical studies are often characterised by small sample sizes, large variability, and ‘problem’ data. Although Fisher-type designs with randomisation and blocking are appropriate and have been vigorously promoted, structured statistically-based designs are almost unknown. Traditional analysis methods are commonly misapplied, and basic terminology and principles of inference testing misinterpreted. Problems are compounded by the lack of adequate statistical training for researchers, and failure of statistical educators to account for the unique demands of preclinical research. The solution is a return to the basics: statistical education tailored to non-statistician investigators, with clear communication of statistical concepts, and curricula that address design and data issues specific to preclinical research. Statistics curricula should focus on statistics as process: data sampling and study design before analysis and inference. Properly-designed and analysed experiments are a matter of ethics as much as procedure. Shifting the focus of statistical education from rote hypothesis testing to sound methodology will reduce the numbers of animals wasted in noninformative experiments and increase overall scientific quality and value of published research.
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spelling pubmed-88625332022-02-23 Between two stools: preclinical research, reproducibility, and statistical design of experiments Reynolds, Penny S. BMC Res Notes Commentary Translation of animal-based preclinical research is hampered by poor validity and reproducibility issues. Unfortunately, preclinical research has ‘fallen between the stools’ of competing study design traditions. Preclinical studies are often characterised by small sample sizes, large variability, and ‘problem’ data. Although Fisher-type designs with randomisation and blocking are appropriate and have been vigorously promoted, structured statistically-based designs are almost unknown. Traditional analysis methods are commonly misapplied, and basic terminology and principles of inference testing misinterpreted. Problems are compounded by the lack of adequate statistical training for researchers, and failure of statistical educators to account for the unique demands of preclinical research. The solution is a return to the basics: statistical education tailored to non-statistician investigators, with clear communication of statistical concepts, and curricula that address design and data issues specific to preclinical research. Statistics curricula should focus on statistics as process: data sampling and study design before analysis and inference. Properly-designed and analysed experiments are a matter of ethics as much as procedure. Shifting the focus of statistical education from rote hypothesis testing to sound methodology will reduce the numbers of animals wasted in noninformative experiments and increase overall scientific quality and value of published research. BioMed Central 2022-02-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8862533/ /pubmed/35189946 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13104-022-05965-w Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Commentary
Reynolds, Penny S.
Between two stools: preclinical research, reproducibility, and statistical design of experiments
title Between two stools: preclinical research, reproducibility, and statistical design of experiments
title_full Between two stools: preclinical research, reproducibility, and statistical design of experiments
title_fullStr Between two stools: preclinical research, reproducibility, and statistical design of experiments
title_full_unstemmed Between two stools: preclinical research, reproducibility, and statistical design of experiments
title_short Between two stools: preclinical research, reproducibility, and statistical design of experiments
title_sort between two stools: preclinical research, reproducibility, and statistical design of experiments
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8862533/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35189946
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13104-022-05965-w
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