Effect size, sample size and power of forced swim test assays in mice: Guidelines for investigators to optimize reproducibility.

ABSTRACT: A recent flood of publications has documented serious problems in scientific reproducibility, power, and reporting of biomedical articles, yet scientists persist in their usual practices. Why? We examined a popular and important preclinical assay, the Forced Swim Test (FST) in mice used to test putative antidepressants. Whether the mice were assayed in a naïve state vs. in a model of depression or stress, and whether the mice were given test agents vs. known antidepressants regarded as positive controls, the mean effect sizes seen in the experiments were indeed extremely large (1.5-2.5 in Cohen's d units); most of the experiments utilized 7-10 animals per group which did have adequate power to reliably detect effects of this magnitude. We propose that this may at least partially explain wh

SUBMITTER: Smalheiser NR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7904226 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature