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Replicate or lie

Replicate or lie Introduction Andrén and colleagues (2008 ) recently published a paper reminding us of good scientific practice, taught and learnt during our early years of research, but frequently forgotten. This article has a similar objective. It is highly likely that the majority of microbial ecologists have taken a basic course in statistics. Unfortunately, the basic principles of statistical analysis and its significance and necessity are frequently ignored. My own exposure to this problem, and my suffering of the consequences, arise through reading, reviewing and editing articles on microbial diversity. The suffering is greatest with articles utilizing ‘expensive’ or cutting edge techniques, such as analysis of clone library sequences, microarray analysis and (increasingly) high‐throughput sequencing. The problems, however, are more widespread and exist beyond these techniques and beyond studies of microbial diversity. Why replicate? This issue of the journal could be filled with articles describing and discussing applications of statistical analysis in microbial ecology, but I wish to address a simple, basic and fundamental aspect – the need for replication. To exemplify this need, imagine that an undergraduate student, wishing to compare bacterial abundance in two lakes, determines cell concentration in a single 10 ml water sample from each lake, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Environmental Microbiology Wiley

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References (5)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2010 Society for Applied Microbiology and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
ISSN
1462-2912
eISSN
1462-2920
DOI
10.1111/j.1462-2920.2010.02201.x
pmid
20438583
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Introduction Andrén and colleagues (2008 ) recently published a paper reminding us of good scientific practice, taught and learnt during our early years of research, but frequently forgotten. This article has a similar objective. It is highly likely that the majority of microbial ecologists have taken a basic course in statistics. Unfortunately, the basic principles of statistical analysis and its significance and necessity are frequently ignored. My own exposure to this problem, and my suffering of the consequences, arise through reading, reviewing and editing articles on microbial diversity. The suffering is greatest with articles utilizing ‘expensive’ or cutting edge techniques, such as analysis of clone library sequences, microarray analysis and (increasingly) high‐throughput sequencing. The problems, however, are more widespread and exist beyond these techniques and beyond studies of microbial diversity. Why replicate? This issue of the journal could be filled with articles describing and discussing applications of statistical analysis in microbial ecology, but I wish to address a simple, basic and fundamental aspect – the need for replication. To exemplify this need, imagine that an undergraduate student, wishing to compare bacterial abundance in two lakes, determines cell concentration in a single 10 ml water sample from each lake,

Journal

Environmental MicrobiologyWiley

Published: Jul 1, 2010

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