Recommendations for the Design and Analysis of In Vivo Electrophysiology Studies
The Journal of Neuroscience has recently released a series of editorials on issues related to experimental design across several research areas. This time there is an editorial entitled “Recommendations for the Design and Analysis of In Vivo Electrophysiology Studies”. The Journal of Neuroscience is one of the most well-read journals in the neuroscience area and their efforts to promote higher quality standards will certainly have an impact on the field.
However, a few questions remain: How does the journal actually come up with these recommendations? Why would such recommendations not mention other already existing guidelines (e.g. ARRIVE)? Are they considered to be too excessive for the field of in vivo electrophysiology?
We hope that these questions will be answered at some point as we do see examples of poorly designed electrophysiological studies where scientists often argue against the use of e.g. randomization and blinding procedures due to the “very special nature of this type of research”.