Interesting article about statistical methods published in Pharmacological Reports 3/2020

We strongly recommend reading an interesting article titled "Reporting statistical methods and outcome of statistical analyses in research articles" published in Pharmacological Reports 3/2020:

https://rdcu.be/b7M0s

Author: Mariusz Cichoń

Statistical methods constitute a powerful tool in modern life sciences. This tool is primarily used to disentangle whether the observed differences, relationships or congruencies are meaningful or may just occur by chance. Thus, statistical inference is an unavoidable part of scientific work. The knowledge of statistics is usually quite limited among researchers representing the field of life sciences, particularly when it comes to constraints imposed on the use of statistical tools and possible interpretations. A common mistake is that researchers take for granted the ability to perform a valid statistical analysis. However, at the stage of data analysis, it may turn out that the gathered data cannot be analysed with any known statistical tools or that there are critical flaws in the interpretation of the results due to violations of basic assumptions of statistical methods. A common mistake made by authors is to thoughtlessly copy the choice of the statistical tests from other authors analysing similar data. This strategy, although sometimes correct, may lead to an incorrect choice of statistical tools and incorrect interpretations. Here, I aim to give some advice on how to choose suitable statistical methods and how to present the results of statistical analyses.