> what motivates researchers to perform and publish studies with low N? You mean low observations/ data point? It's really simple in the medical world. Money

> what motivates researchers to perform and publish studies with low N? You mean low observations/ data point? It's really simple in the medical world. Money. Longitudinal data mean following people over years. Imagine how much money we have to pay these people for 100 people and say for just 5 years. Medical data/ experiment isn't cheap. You can do it with rats but it doesn't represent human. And iirc FDA found only 50% of what happen to rats can be replicated to Human when they look at the drug result. They have Assays now but I'm not sure how well it represent real subject. The ways FDA does it at least for NTCR is we test for liver toxicology to make things cheaper using assays data. Instead of real human being.