As stated in a recent post, the majority of scientific findings are likely false (Ioannidis, 2005). Although there are multiple reasons for this, it has been suggested that the pressure to publish is the driving incentive behind scientists adopting poor research practices that lead to false findings. In a recent paper, Smaldino & McElreath (2016) argue that the pressure to
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There is evidence that many (and possibly most) of the conclusions drawn from biomedical research are probably false (Ioannidis, 2005). In a 2013 Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper entitled “Power failure: why small sample size undermines the reliability of neuroscience”, Button et al. explained how low statistical power is partly to blame for a similar issue in the field of neuroscience.
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The scientist’s lab notebook is essentially a record of all scholarly activities conducted. However scientists often find it difficult to keep, or know how to keep, a good lab notebook. In 2015, PLoS published an editorial providing guidance on how to keep a good lab notebook. Here is a summary of a few key points: Record all scientific activities in
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If you have been paying attention to the scientific tabloids (if there is such a thing), the headlines would continually be filled with claims that modern science is having a crisis of confidence. In big bold letters, tabloids would announce there is a REPRODUCIBILITY CRISIS in science. But is all this due to a handful of grumpy scientists who got
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Many research questions investigate how outcomes change (over time) in response to different test conditions or treatments. Participants are randomised into groups to receive a test condition or treatment to make the groups comparable in every way except the test condition or treatment that is received. Consequently, comparing outcomes between groups allows us to understand how outcomes change under different
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Bar and line graphs with standard deviation (SD) or standard error (SE) error bars are often used to visually present continuous data from laboratory studies with small sample sizes. Last year the journal PloS Biology published a paper showing that presenting such data this way is problematic for the following reasons: bar and line graphs conceal how data are distributed
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