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> Although this is an interesting result, beware, n=25 for the whole study, which means there were only eight people per group. I'm so tired of this comment be
by ASpring 10y ago
> Although this is an interesting result, beware, n=25 for the whole study, which means there were only eight people per group.
I'm so tired of this comment being made about every single study that finds itself on HN. It's a complete misunderstanding about how statistics work. The whole point is to use a small sample to say that something about the larger population.
- vlan0 10y agoPardon my ignorance, as my memory is a little foggy when it comes to statistics and scientific studies, but doesn't the sample size need to be large enough to represent the population? I forget exactly how that works.
- TheCoelacanth 10y agoYes, but virtually every published peer-reviewed study will have a large enough sample size and will have done the math to make sure that it is large enough. If it's the first thing that comes to the mind of random HN commenters who haven't even read the actual article, it's probably also going to occur to the experts writing and reviewing the article. Peer reviewed articles aren't perfect, but it's pretty arrogant to think that the authors and reviewers are so bad at research that you can find problems with them without even reading them.