Low statistical power and overestimated anthropogenic impacts, exacerbated by publication bias, dominate field studies in global change biology.

ABSTRACT: Field studies are essential to reliably quantify ecological responses to global change because they are exposed to realistic climate manipulations. Yet such studies are limited in replicates, resulting in less power and, therefore, potentially unreliable effect estimates. Furthermore, while manipulative field experiments are assumed to be more powerful than non-manipulative observations, it has rarely been scrutinized using extensive data. Here, using 3847 field experiments that were designed to estimate the effect of environmental stressors on ecosystems, we systematically quantified their statistical power and magnitude (Type M) and sign (Type S) errors. Our investigations focused upon the reliability of field experiments to assess the effect of stressors on both ecosystem's response mag

SUBMITTER: Yang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9299651 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature