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Constantinos Eleftheriou @celefthe.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

It's been a couple of years now since I finished my PhD at the @sidb-edinburgh.bsky.social ... and looking back at the experience, I think most of the things I learned had little to do with neuroscience. I list a few of them in my latest blog post at celefthe.com/blog/2026/a-...

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Constantinos Eleftheriou @celefthe.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Pseudoreplication is not inevitable. Statistical tools such as linear mixed models allow us to take within- and between-animal variability into account. Hierarchical bootstraps are also another option (and a personal favourite!)

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Constantinos Eleftheriou @celefthe.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

We need to start treating our statistics with the same respect we treat our experimental techniques & design. Merely paying lip service to reporting guidelines is not enough, and journals/editors need to take responsibility for the statistical rigour of the work they publish.

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Constantinos Eleftheriou @celefthe.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

...especially when the effect sizes appear very small, or the degree of pseudoreplication is very high (e.g. very large number of pseudoreplicates per animal).

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Constantinos Eleftheriou @celefthe.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Is it a problem? Well, yes if we care about reproducibility, since pseudoreplication increases the likelihood of false positive results! Of course, just because an article is pseudoreplicated it doesn't mean the results outright wrong - but caution is warranted...

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Constantinos Eleftheriou @celefthe.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Stringent requirements and statistical reporting guidelines enforced by most journals since ~2012 have made no difference to the prevalence of pseudoreplication... but we did find that better reporting makes pseudoreplication easier to detect🤷

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Constantinos Eleftheriou @celefthe.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

We scored 645 articles published over the last 2 decades and found most were pseudoreplicated (~65% FXS and ~80% NDD articles), a trend which has persisted over the past 20 years.

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