ArticleRoyal Society open science2017
Low statistical power in biomedical science: a review of three human research domains.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 90 papers, 11 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
90 citing papers in PubMed, 11 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Predictive Processing Among Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder During Online Language Comprehension: A Preliminary Systematic Review.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Pooled it
- Oncological and Survival Endpoints in Cancer Cachexia Clinical Trials: Systematic Review 6 of the Cachexia Endpoints Series.Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle · 2025Pooled it
- Magnetic stimulation in the treatment of female urgency urinary incontinence: a systematic review.International urogynecology journal · 2023Pooled it
- Highlight results, don't hide them: Enhance interpretation, reduce biases and improve reproducibility.NeuroImage · 2023Pooled it
- Reevaluating the role of the hippocampus in memory: A meta-analysis of neurotoxic lesion studies in nonhuman primates.Hippocampus · 2023Pooled it
- Measures of Perceived Neighborhood Food Environments and Dietary Habits: A Systematic Review of Methods and Associations.Nutrients · 2022Pooled it
- Sleep deprivation and memory: Meta-analytic reviews of studies on sleep deprivation before and after learning.Psychological bulletin · 2021Pooled it
- Sex-dependent effects of prenatal food and protein restriction on offspring physiology in rats and mice: systematic review and meta-analyses.Biology of sex differences · 2021Pooled it
- Influence of polymorphisms in theF1000Research · 2021Pooled it
- Statistical power estimation in non-invasive brain stimulation studies and its clinical implications: An exploratory study of the meta-analyses.Asian journal of psychiatry · 2019Pooled it
- Association of PPARGC1A Gly428Ser (rs8192678) polymorphism with potential for athletic ability and sports performance: A meta-analysis.PloS one · 2019Pooled it
- The Effect of Chewing Gum in Managing Labor Pain Intensity and Anxiety Level in Primiparous Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial.International journal of community based nursing and midwifery · 2025Trial
- The statistical properties of RCTs and a proposal for shrinkage.Statistics in medicine · 2021Trial
- A randomized clinical trial of plasticity-based cognitive training in mild traumatic brain injury.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2021Trial
- Neuroticism, Internalizing Psychopathology, and Affective Reactions to Thought Content in Daily Life.Journal of personality · 2026Article
- Statistically significant results from low-power analyses: A comedy of errors.Global epidemiology · 2026Article
- Graduating Nursing Students' Self-Assessment of Clinical Competence and Need for Further Training: A Nordic Cross- Sectional Study.Nursing open · 2025Article
- Automated survey collection with LLM-based conversational agents.JAMIA open · 2025Article
- Replicability of bulk RNA-Seq differential expression and enrichment analysis results for small cohort sizes.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- History of chronic pain and opioid use is associated with cognitive decline and mild cognitive impairment.Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society : JINS · 2025Article
30 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Studies with low statistical power increase the likelihood that a statistically significant finding represents a false positive result. We conducted a review of meta-analyses of studies investigating the association of biological, environmental or cognitive parameters with neurological, psychiatric and somatic diseases, excluding treatment studies, in order to estimate the average statistical power across these domains. Taking the effect size indicated by a meta-analysis as the best estimate of the likely true effect size, and assuming a threshold for declaring statistical significance of 5%, we found that approximately 50% of studies have statistical power in the 0-10% or 11-20% range, well below the minimum of 80% that is often considered conventional. Studies with low statistical power appear to be common in the biomedical sciences, at least in the specific subject areas captured by our search strategy. However, we also observe evidence that this depends in part on research methodology, with candidate gene studies showing very low average power and studies using cognitive/behavioural measures showing high average power. This warrants further investigation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.