Content-Type: |
text/plain; charset="UTF-8" |
Date: |
Sun, 26 Jul 2020 08:48:58 -0700 |
Reply-To: |
|
Subject: |
|
MIME-Version: |
1.0 |
Message-ID: |
|
Content-Transfer-Encoding: |
quoted-printable |
Sender: |
|
From: |
|
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
A recent study tested whether carrying no (T0), one (T1), or two (T2)
varroa mites affected the survival of newly-emerged bees in cages. The
results were that: " the survival rates recorded were 57.5% in T0, 42.5% in
T1, and 40.0% in T2."
The authors then ran the stats in order to see whether these results
differed from random chance: "The treatments did not affect significantly
the bees’ survival (p = 0.283)."
The probability was that there was a 28% chance that they would have gotten
this result, had there been no effect whatsoever due to treatment. That
should have been the end of discussion until more reps were run to see
whether they could actually tease out any effect due to treatment.
But the journal allowed them not only to publish, but to conclude that: "V.
destructor ...provok[ed] a reduction of the survival rate even when this
value was not significant statistically."
This sort of unsupported claim is inexcusable.
I'm not saying that mites don't hurt bees, but if your data does not
statistically support your hypothesis, then you should not say that it does.
--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
|
|