February 15-18, 2009 Washington State Convention Center Seattle ...

SOME COMMON DESIGN AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS PROBLEMS APPEARING IN
THE AQUACULTURE LITERATURE
Karl D. Shearer
The Aquaculture Protein Centre
Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences
The Norwegian University of Life Sciences
1432 Aas, Norway
Karl.shearer@umb.no
Statistical analysis is an integral part of aquaculture research. The widespread availability of desktop computers and relatively
inexpensive statistical software has allowed researchers to deign and evaluate increasingly more complex experiments. There
is however, widespread misuse of these tools. It is essential that researchers have sufficient statistical literacy to properly design
experiments, choose an appropriate statistical test and verify that the underlying assumptions of the test have been met.
This applies not only to their own research, but also to their ability to evaluate published literature and to referee manuscripts
submitted for publication. Examples, from the aquaculture literature, of some common design and statistical analysis mistakes
will be presented along with some suggestion that can help avoid some of these problems. Examples are taken from the most
common types of experiments; nutrient requirements, dietary ingredient evaluation and fish meal and oil replacement, proximate
composition determination, protein/energy balance, dietary affects on physiology, fish health evaluation and product quality
determination. This presentation will concentrate on conceptual rather than the computational aspects of these problems.
Resources that can be used to aid in evaluation of the statistical quality of aquaculture literature are presented.
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