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Date: | Fri, 1 Feb 2013 14:19:43 -0500 |
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This isn't a debatable question. Just as several plants in a pot are not
true replicates, subsampling bees from one colony does not qualify as a true
replicate. This is statistically non-defensible. You're sampling
individuals from closely related sub-families - all same mother, different
fathers.
> 2. > She also made the questionable decision to take all the bees
for
> all “replicates” from only one colony, instead replicating the
experiments
> with bees from multiple colonies, which may differ in health and
> susceptibility to the toxin.
You answered your own question. Bees from multiple colonies may differ in
health and add further factors to an already complicated study. These>
studies are complicated which is why many researchers were never interested
in doing.
No, any researcher doing this doesn't understand statistics. Its a
fallacy introduced by some of the private testing companies looking to save money.
Atkins and Johansen knew this - their protocols called for sampling at
LEAST three colonies.
Here's the problem - any colony may range from susceptible to average to
resistant to say a chemical and/or pathogen. If you BASE your study on one
and only one, let's say its a pesticide label study - you run the risk of
basing the entire decision on a colony of unknown status - does it represent
the majority of bee colonies? Is it a particularly sensitive colony? Is
it so robust that nothing is likely to be seen. You can't answer these
questions if you only use bees from one colony.
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