In: Case Study

“Blinding in histopathology assessments – I see your point but…”
June 16, 2022

We strongly believe that, in most cases, preclinical in vivo studies conducted without adequate protection against risks of bias (i.e., underpowered, without randomization, blinding,…

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How much power should my next study have: One size fits all?
March 14, 2022

There is a slow but steady increase in the number of publications where authors report on sample size justification.  In most…

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Careful interpretation of Western blotting data
February 23, 2021

Western blotting represents a powerful technique for the semi-quantitative determination of protein expression and the detection of protein modifications like phosphorylation…

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In vivo veritas
October 5, 2020

Most of our readers are biologists but nevertheless we are occasionally exposed to medicinal chemistry literature describing novel research tools, lead…

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Best-dose analysis – A confirmatory research case
August 17, 2020

It is often observed and discussed that there are substantial inter-individual differences that can overshadow effects of otherwise effective treatments.  These…

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Beauty is not everything
May 28, 2020

Being able to trust the experimental data is critical for experimental research. This is certainly also true for Western Blotting as…

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Covid-19 and the PPV
May 28, 2020

There has been a lot in the news recently about using antibody tests to detect people who have had Covid-19 and…

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Biological vs technical replicates: Now from a data analysis perspective
March 31, 2020

We have discussed this topic several times before (HERE and HERE). There seems to be a growing understanding that, when reporting an experiment’s…

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From fecal transplants, obesity and the importance of randomizatIon and normalization
February 1, 2020

In one of the last Newsletter issues (LINK), we wrote about the uncertainties which sometimes exist when trying to find the…

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When p-hacking is not p-hacking – or: How shall the data be reported?
December 18, 2019

Organ bath experiments are a key technology to assess contractility of smooth muscle. When comparing force of contraction, investigators typically normalize…

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