The problem of pseudoreplication in neuroscientific studies: is it affecting your analysis?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Pseudoreplication occurs when observations are not statistically independent, but treated as if they are. This can occur when there are multiple observations on the same subjects, when samples are nested or hierarchically organised, or when measurements are correlated in time or space. Analysis of such data without taking these dependencies into account can lead to meaningless results, and examples can easily be found in the neuroscience literature.

Results

A single issue of Nature Neuroscience provided a number of examples and is used as a case study to highlight how pseudoreplication arises in neuroscientific studies, why the analyses in these papers are incorrect, and appropriate analytical methods are provided. 12% of papers had pseudoreplication and a further

SUBMITTER: Lazic SE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2817684 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature