Puopolo Maria
Dipartimento di Biologia Cellulare e Neuroscienze, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
Ann Ist Super Sanita. 2004;40(2):157-63.
For ethical reasons, the least number of animals possible should be used in biomedical research, though not so few as to fail to detect biologically important effects or to necessitate the repetition of experiments. We describe biostatistical approaches that can contribute to either reducing the number of animals in single experiments or to increasing the quality of studies so that fewer subsequent studies (and thus animals) will be needed. The described approaches regard different phases of experimentation, specifically: planning the experimental design and calculating the sample size, controlling variability, choosing the response variable, postulating the statistical hypothesis to be tested, choosing the procedure for analysing data, and interpreting and suitably presenting the results.
出于伦理原因，生物医学研究应使用尽可能少的动物，但数量也不能太少以至于无法检测到生物学上的重要效应或导致实验需要重复。我们描述了一些生物统计学方法，这些方法要么有助于减少单个实验中动物的数量，要么有助于提高研究质量，从而减少后续所需的研究（以及动物）数量。所描述的方法涉及实验的不同阶段，具体包括：规划实验设计和计算样本量、控制变异性、选择反应变量、提出要检验的统计假设、选择数据分析程序以及解释和适当地呈现结果。
