SynthesisPloS one2018
Effect size and statistical power in the rodent fear conditioning literature - A systematic review.
Synthesis in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 5 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
25 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Are biologically meaningful effect sizes a factor in study design? A systematic review of translational chronic variable stress studies.Experimental physiology · 2026Pooled it
- Effects of psychedelics on neurogenesis and broader neuroplasticity: a systematic review.Molecular medicine (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Pooled it
- A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Social Dominance Status and Common Behavioral Phenotypes in Male Laboratory Mice.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- The Synaptic Scaling Literature: A Systematic Review of Methodologies and Quality of Reporting.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Different temporal windows for CB1 receptor involvement in contextual fear memory destabilisation in the amygdala and hippocampus.PloS one · 2019Pooled it
- Mild concussion impairs extinction of avoidance and alters respective brain circuits in male rats.Experimental neurology · 2026Article
- Early-life adversity in rodents: Experimental design is of the essence.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Power calculations for larval zebrafish in light-dark transition test for developmental neurotoxicity.Neurotoxicology · 2026Article
- Dietary phytoestrogens recalibrate socioemotional behavior in C57Bl/6J mice in a sex- and timing-dependent manner.Hormones and behavior · 2025Article
- A data analysis approach for locomotor behavioral responses in developmentally exposed zebrafish.NAM journal · 2025Article
- Tetramerization of PKM2 Alleviates Traumatic Brain Injury by Ameliorating Mitochondrial Damage in Microglia.Journal of neuroimmune pharmacology : the official journal of the Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology · 2024Article
- Article
- Reducing the false discovery rate of preclinical animal research with Bayesian statistical decision criteria.Statistical methods in medical research · 2023Article
- Preclinical trials in Alzheimer's disease: Sample size and effect size for behavioural and neuropathological outcomes in 5xFAD mice.PloS one · 2023Article
- Low prevalence of high blood pressure in pregnant women in Burkina Faso: a cross-sectional study.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2022Article
- Autoencoders for sample size estimation for fully connected neural network classifiers.NPJ digital medicine · 2022Article
- Dendritic spine density changes and homeostatic synaptic scaling: a meta-analysis of animal studies.Neural regeneration research · 2022Article
- Article
- Article
- Effect size, sample size and power of forced swim test assays in mice: Guidelines for investigators to optimize reproducibility.PloS one · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Proposals to increase research reproducibility frequently call for focusing on effect sizes instead of p values, as well as for increasing the statistical power of experiments. However, it is unclear to what extent these two concepts are indeed taken into account in basic biomedical science. To study this in a real-case scenario, we performed a systematic review of effect sizes and statistical power in studies on learning of rodent fear conditioning, a widely used behavioral task to evaluate memory. Our search criteria yielded 410 experiments comparing control and treated groups in 122 articles. Interventions had a mean effect size of 29.5%, and amnesia caused by memory-impairing interventions was nearly always partial. Mean statistical power to detect the average effect size observed in well-powered experiments with significant differences (37.2%) was 65%, and was lower among studies with non-significant results. Only one article reported a sample size calculation, and our estimated sample size to achieve 80% power considering typical effect sizes and variances (15 animals per group) was reached in only 12.2% of experiments. Actual effect sizes correlated with effect size inferences made by readers on the basis of textual descriptions of results only when findings were non-significant, and neither effect size nor power correlated with study quality indicators, number of citations or impact factor of the publishing journal. In summary, effect sizes and statistical power have a wide distribution in the rodent fear conditioning literature, but do not seem to have a large influence on how results are described or cited. Failure to take these concepts into consideration might limit attempts to improve reproducibility in this field of science.
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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.