Author Archives: Joanna Diong

What does research reproducibility mean?

Concerns about research reproducibility (or lack thereof) continue to escalate but it seems people can have quite different ideas about what research reproducibility means. In a perspectives editorial, Goodman and colleagues demonstrate concepts on reproducibility can be both precise: …reproducibility refers to the ability of a researcher to duplicate the results of a prior study using the same materials as

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File in/out: How to import CSV files into Python using Pandas

Comma separated values (CSV) files are a type of text file commonly used to store data. In a CSV file, each line of text contains values separated with commas. CSV files can be imported into Python in different ways (eg. csv.reader, numpy.loadtxt, etc). One useful method is to import CSV files into Pandas dataframes. Pandas package. Pandas is a Python

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Reproducibility: The EQUATOR Network and reporting guidelines

Increasing awareness of the lack of reproducibility in research has prompted many scientists and other professionals to develop strategies to improve research reproducibility. One key reason why there is so much waste in biomedical research is because many reports of research are incomplete or inaccurate. One group that has endeavoured improve the reporting of health research by developing reporting guidelines

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Minimising false positives and false negatives in research

In December 2016, the Journal of Applied Physiology commenced the series Cores of Reproducibility in Physiology (CORP) to highlight the lack of reproducibliity in physiology research and provide solutions. In the first CORP article, statistician Dogulas Curran-Everett explains that to improve reproducibility in research, experiments and analyses need to minimise false positive and false negative findings. The false positive rate

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P values and hypothesis tests cannot indicate the size or precision of effects

P values and hypothesis testing methods are frequently misused in clinical and experimental research, perhaps because of the misconception that they provide simple, objective tools to separate true from untrue facts. In a new paper, the cardiologist Daniel Mark and statisticians Kerry Lee and Frank Harrell explain the role and limitations of p values and hypothesis tests in clinical research.

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File in/out: How to import data files from Spike2 (and Matlab) into Python

Spike2 is a type of signal acquisition software commonly used in physiological studies (eg. electromyography, kinematics, cardiovascular research, sleep, etc). It is possible to perform signal analysis in Spike2 by using the drop-down menus, or by programming scripts to automate analysis. However, the programming language for Spike2 is difficult to read, which discourages many scientists from learning to program scripts

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