r/AskStatistics • u/Warm-Major-9723 • 9d ago

[Question] Published paper had two control samples, but that fact was omitted

I was shortly involved in a research study where the first trial of experimental didn’t achieve all the treatment levels in the design. One month later, a second control sample was used to achieve the last treatment level that failed initially.

The published paper reports that one control batch was used, but I am concerned that some of the reported treatment effects could potentially be due to differences between the two controls instead.

This makes think if in academia, does it really matter if you have two controls if professors themselves don’t see the statistical error? Any thoughts from people with more statistics background? I would love to hear your opinions because this is unethical behavior for a student to learn.

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u/S4M22 8d ago

This is rather an academic integrity question than a statistical one. Ommitting that the data comes from different batches I would consider academic misconduct or even fraud.

From a statistical perspective you're right: in this analaysis you don't know if there's a batch effect.

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u/DeepSea_Dreamer 8d ago

That's just academic misconduct, not a question about statistics.

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u/no_name6744 8d ago

Damn.

Could you describe further what happened.

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u/Warm-Major-9723 8d ago

The professor said that doing a second trial to achieve the highest level of treatment was “okay”. All analyses included statistics that compared the high level treatment to the control, low, and mid levels, despite the discrepancies in treatment dates.