EDUCATIONAL CORNER
“Blinding in histopathology assessments – I see your point but…”
June 16, 2022We strongly believe that, in most cases, preclinical in vivo studies conducted without adequate protection against risks of bias (i.e., underpowered, without randomization, blinding,…
Read MoreHow much power should my next study have: One size fits all?
March 14, 2022There is a slow but steady increase in the number of publications where authors report on sample size justification. In most…
Read MoreCareful interpretation of Western blotting data
February 23, 2021Western blotting represents a powerful technique for the semi-quantitative determination of protein expression and the detection of protein modifications like phosphorylation…
Read MoreIn vivo veritas
October 5, 2020Most of our readers are biologists but nevertheless we are occasionally exposed to medicinal chemistry literature describing novel research tools, lead…
Read MoreBest-dose analysis – A confirmatory research case
August 17, 2020It is often observed and discussed that there are substantial inter-individual differences that can overshadow effects of otherwise effective treatments. These…
Read MoreBeauty is not everything
May 28, 2020Being able to trust the experimental data is critical for experimental research. This is certainly also true for Western Blotting as…
Read MoreCovid-19 and the PPV
May 28, 2020There has been a lot in the news recently about using antibody tests to detect people who have had Covid-19 and…
Read MoreBiological vs technical replicates: Now from a data analysis perspective
March 31, 2020We have discussed this topic several times before (HERE and HERE). There seems to be a growing understanding that, when reporting an experiment’s…
Read MoreFrom fecal transplants, obesity and the importance of randomizatIon and normalization
February 1, 2020In one of the last Newsletter issues (LINK), we wrote about the uncertainties which sometimes exist when trying to find the…
Read MoreWhen p-hacking is not p-hacking – or: How shall the data be reported?
December 18, 2019Organ bath experiments are a key technology to assess contractility of smooth muscle. When comparing force of contraction, investigators typically normalize…
Read MoreEstimation vs Hypothesis-Testing
November 22, 2019As some of our readers may know, the PAASP team was involved in the “Negative results Award” project that took place…
Read MoreLicense to Kill – From Killer Experiments and Synthetic Lethality
August 12, 2019The Maternal Embryonic Leucine zipper Kinase (MELK) is an interesting enzyme:In 2005, MELK was first implicated in cancer by finding elevated…
Read MoreSomething is rotten in the state of antibody quality
March 11, 2019A team of researchers led by Eleftherios P. Diamandis at the University of Toronto set out to discover novel serological markers…
Read MoreThe SOD1 mouse – 10 years later
December 20, 2018It has been more than 10 years since two seminal papers by Ludolph et al (2007) and Scott et al (2008) have introduced recommendations for…
Read MoreReporting details – Differential induction of innate immune responses by LPS
November 17, 2018The importance of reporting small details and making well-informed decisions about which information to include for each experimental parameter/factor in scientific…
Read More“Andromeda and Orion of modern biomarker research”
September 10, 2018Amyloid beta (Aß) accumulation in the brain is regarded as one of the histopathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. However, Aß build-up…
Read MoreReproducibility Issues – The Ghosts of HeLa
July 9, 2018Listeria monocytogenes is an intracellular pathogen and the causative agent of the food-borne disease listeriosis. This disease primarily affects pregnant women,…
Read MoreHeads I win, tails you lose
June 6, 2018Preclinical in vivo scientists often have to deal with a very interesting situation: Imagine we design a study to demonstrate that…
Read MoreReplication Study: Fusobacterium nucleatum infection is prevalent in human colorectal carcinoma
June 6, 2018As part of the “Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology”, a Registered Report (Repass et al., 2016) was published in 2016, that described…
Read MoreMake hay while the sun shines
January 23, 2018“When she arrived, I gave her a data set of a self-funded, failed study which had null results (it was a…
Read MoreAfter the Nature checklists – what’s next?
December 19, 2017In the November issue of our Newsletter, we have featured a publication by the NPQIP Collaborative Group (LINK) that analyzed the…
Read MoreThe Birthday Paradox
November 10, 2017In biomedical research, dealing with probabilities is part of the daily routine for many scientists, independently of their specific research area….
Read MoreRandomization – The Horizon homeopathic dilution experiment
October 11, 2017All Case Study publications presented in this section have received a lot of interest among the scientific community and are particularly…
Read MoreFrom dull rats and bright rats
September 28, 2017In 1963, Robert Rosenthal and Kermit L. Fode supervised an animal study performed by students in order to gain further experience…
Read MoreGlyphosate and the importance of transparent reporting
September 1, 2017Glyphosate, or N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine, is a widely used broad-spectrum, nonselective herbicide that has been in use since 1974. Glyphosate effectively suppresses the…
Read MoreError bars can convey misleading information
July 26, 2017by Martin C. Michel The most common type of graphical data reporting are bar graphs depicting means with SEM error bars….
Read MoreThe different sample size of inter-connected research methods
June 7, 2017We will continue presenting Case Study publications that are particularly interesting from the Good Research Practice perspective. We hope that these…
Read MoreWhy details matter
May 19, 2017The Materials and Methods section is a crucial component of any formal lab report, such as a scientific publication. This part…
Read MoreNeed for a particularly rigorous planning of studies that are likely to raise a lot of attention when results are published
April 19, 2017After being published, research findings often become a subject of replication efforts. Such replication efforts may be especially important when the…
Read MoreEffect Vibrations and a Roman God
March 19, 2017There are a large number of ways how to analyze the same data set. Depending on the decision made in handling,…
Read MoreA priori power analysis – friend or foe?
November 23, 2016Performing a power analysis is important for planning experimental studies. It helps us to estimate the sample size necessary to support…
Read MoreSearching for significance
August 20, 2016To examine associations between urinary chemical concentrations and adult health status, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) measured…
Read MoreScientists believed a whiff of the bonding hormone Oxytocin could increase trust between humans. Then they went back and checked their work…
June 22, 2016Over the last two decades, the neuropeptide Oxytocin (OT) has been studied extensively and many articles have been published about its…
Read MoreGDF11 – the ‘new blood’ anti-aging protein
May 22, 2016The seminal paper by John Ioannidis entitled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” (2005 PLoS Medicine 2: e124), contains some…
Read MorePresented data do not always support conclusions made in a paper
March 20, 2016We will continue presenting Case Study publications that have received a lot of interest among the scientific community (and sometimes even in mass…
Read MoreSperm RNA carries marks of trauma
February 20, 2016We will use this Case Study section to draw your attention to publications that have received a lot of attention in the scientific…
Read More