New Author Guidelines for Displaying Data and Reporting Data Analysis and Statistical Methods in Experimental Biology
Open accessAbstract
The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics has revised the Instructions to Authors for Drug Metabolism and Disposition, Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and Molecular Pharmacology These revisions relate to data analysis (including statistical analysis) and reporting but do not tell investigators how to design and perform their experiments. Their overall focus is on greater granularity in the description of what has been done and found. Key recommendations include the need to differentiate between preplanned, hypothesis-testing, and exploratory experiments or studies; explanations of whether key elements of study design, such as sample size and choice of specific statistical tests, had been specified before any data were obtained or adapted thereafter; and explanations of whether any outliers (data points or entire experiments) were eliminated and when the rules for doing so had been defined. Variability should be described by S.D. or interquartile range, and precision should be described by confidence intervals; S.E. should not be used. P values should be used sparingly; in most cases, reporting differences or ratios (effect sizes) with their confidence intervals will be preferred. Depiction of data in figures should provide as much granularity as possible, e.g., by replacing bar graphs with scatter plots wherever feasible and violin or box-and-whisker plots when not. This editorial explains the revisions and the underlying scientific rationale. We believe that these revised guidelines will lead to a less biased and more transparent reporting of research findings.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The revised guidelines are in line with many journals' policies and will assist authors in complying with information requirements on the ethical review of the research, data presentation and access, statistical methods, and conflicts of interest.
“The revised guidelines are also in line with many journals’ policies and will assist authors in complying with information requirements on the ethical review of the research [48, 49], data presentation and access [50–52], statistical methods [51, 52], and conflicts of interest [53, 54].”
From The ARRIVE guidelines 2.0: Updated guidelines for reporting animal research (2020) · cites this paper as [52]
Split into 2 atoms — 1 confirmed, 1 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2005) · PLoS Medicine · doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 · Cited by 10,505 · see citing works
Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797611417632 · Cited by 6,567 · see citing works
The ASA Statement on <i>p</i> -Values: Context, Process, and Purpose
Wasserstein, R. L., & Lazar, N. A. (2016) · The American Statistician · doi:10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108 · Cited by 6,306 · see citing works
Statistical tests, P values, confidence intervals, and power: a guide to misinterpretations
Greenland, S., Senn, S. J., Rothman, K. J., Carlin, J. B., Poole, C., Goodman, S. N., & Altman, D. G. (2016) · European Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1007/s10654-016-0149-3 · Cited by 3,200 · see citing works
Raise standards for preclinical cancer research
Begley, C. G., & Ellis, L. M. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/483531a · Cited by 2,979 · see citing works
The Abuse of Power: The Pervasive Fallacy of Power Calculations for Data Analysis
Hoenig, J. M., & Heisey, D. M. (2001) · The American Statistician · doi:10.1198/000313001300339897 · Cited by 2,046 · see citing works
HARKing: Hypothesizing after the results are known
Kerr, N. L. (1998) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr0203_4 · Cited by 1,989 · see citing works
Believe it or not: how much can we rely on published data on potential drug targets?
Prinz, F., Schlange, T., & Asadullah, K. (2011) · Nature Reviews Drug Discovery · doi:10.1038/nrd3439-c1 · Cited by 1,888 · see citing works
The Extent and Consequences of P-Hacking in Science
Head, M. L., Holman, L., Lanfear, R., Kahn, A. T., & Jennions, M. D. (2015) · PLOS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002106 · Cited by 1,388 · see citing works
Curtis, M. J., Alexander, S., Cirino, G., Docherty, J. R., George, C. H., Giembycz, M. A., Hoyer, D., Insel, P. A., Izzo, A. A., Ji, Y., et al. (2018) · British Journal of Pharmacology · doi:10.1111/bph.14153 · Cited by 1,338 · see citing works
Publication bias: the elephant in the review
Dalton, J. E., Bolen, S. D., & Mascha, E. J. (2016) · Anesthesia & Analgesia · doi:10.1213/ane.0000000000001596 · Cited by 337 · see citing works
Macleod, M. R., van der Worp, H. B., Sena, E. S., Howells, D. W., Dirnagl, U., & Donnan, G. A. (2008) · Stroke · doi:10.1161/strokeaha.108.515957 · Cited by 319 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 5
- Ho J, Tumkaya T, Aryal S, Choi H, and Claridge-Chang H (2019) Moving beyond P values: Everyday data analysis with estimation plots. Nature Methods 16:565-566, doi: 10.1038/s41592-019-0470-3. · DOI
- Kairalla JA, Coffey CS, Thomann MA, and Muller KE (2012) Adaptive trial designs: a review of barriers and opportunities. Trials 13:145.
- Motulsky H (2018) Intuitive Biostatistics, 4th ed, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
- Motulsky HJ (2014b) Common misconceptions about data analysis and statistics. J Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics 351:200-205, doi: 10.1124/ jpet.114.219170 25204545. · DOI
- National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine (2019) Reproducibility and Replicability in Science, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The ARRIVE guidelines 2.0: Updated guidelines for reporting animal research
Percie du Sert, N., Hurst, V., Ahluwalia, A., Alam, S., Avey, M. T., Baker, M., Browne, W. J., Clark, A., Cuthill, I. C., Dirnagl, U., et al. (2020) · PLOS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000410 · Cited by 5,939 · see citing works
Reporting animal research: Explanation and elaboration for the ARRIVE guidelines 2.0
Percie du Sert, N., Ahluwalia, A., Alam, S., Avey, M. T., Baker, M., Browne, W. J., Clark, A., Cuthill, I. C., Dirnagl, U., Emerson, M., et al. (2020) · PLOS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.3000411 · Cited by 2,677 · see citing works
State-Dependent Inhibition of Nav1.8 Sodium Channels by VX-150 and VX-548
Vaelli, P., Fujita, A., Jo, S., Zhang, H.-X. B., Osorno, T., Ma, X., & Bean, B. P. (2024) · Molecular Pharmacology · doi:10.1124/molpharm.124.000944 · Cited by 58 · see citing works
Best, A. M., Lang, T. A., Greenberg, B. L., Gunsolley, J. C., Ioannidou, E., & _, _. (2024) · The Angle Orthodontist · doi:10.2319/ohstat_guidelines.1 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
- Authors
- Michel, M. C., Murphy, T. J., & Motulsky, H. J.
- Affiliations
- Emory University (US)
- Venue
- Molecular Pharmacology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2020-01
- Volume
- 97
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 49-60
- ISSN
- 0026-895X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2997946065
- Cited by
- 127
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Molecular Pharmacology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- European Commission (777364, HORIZON2020)
- Innovative Medicines Initiative (777364)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Keywords
- author guidelines, statistical reporting, data analysis, experimental design, hypothesis testing, exploratory analysis, sample size, outlier removal, effect size, confidence intervals, p-values, data visualization, scatter plots, box-and-whisker plots, research transparency, pharmacology journals
- MeSH terms
- Data Analysis, Data Interpretation, Statistical, Drug Evaluation, Preclinical, Humans, Pharmacology, Publishing, Research Design, Societies, Scientific, United States, Guidelines as Topic
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
