Developing a 21st Century Neuroscience Workforce Workshop Summary (2015) / Chapter Skim
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3 Improving Training in Protocol Design, Experimental Rigor, and Quantitative Skills
3 Improving Training in Protocol Design, Experimental Rigor, and Quantitative Skills
Pages 35-42
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From page 35... ...
. • Statistics modules tailored to the key subdisciplines of neuroscience can augment general courses on statistics, providing a more specific set of analytical skills that might benefit trainees according to their concentration (Brown)
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From page 36... ...
In contrast, many workshop participants identified noticeable gaps in three areas of neuroscience training: protocol design, experimental rigor, and quantitative skills. Many participants discussed several challenges associated with trainees not learning the fundamentals of conducting rigorous experiments, including the risk of irreproducible findings.
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From page 37... ...
• Deficient experimental procedures • Lack of transparency in reporting findings • Randomization, blinding, sample size estimations • Publication bias Potential Solutions One workshop participant placed the responsibility for changing the culture around experimental rigor primarily on faculty members within graduate programs. He said that as journal reviewers and editors, grant reviewers, mentors, and hiring and promotion advisory board members faculty are in the best position to demand change and to model it to trainees.
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From page 38... ...
DESIGNING EXPERIMENTS WITH COMMON SENSE AND INTUITION The biggest challenge facing neuroscience is training students to comprehend the data they are collecting, said Marder. As next-generation technologies proliferate and experiments become more complex and multifaceted, she opined that common sense and intuition will be increasingly critical.
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From page 39... ...
According to several workshop participants, another challenge to designing the right experiment is knowing what tool to use to collect the appropriate data. Akil warned that "falling in love with a tool" can get in the way of asking the right questions.
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The only way for scientists to stay relevant is to build on a base of common sense and intuition and continually develop new skills and knowledge throughout their careers. DEFINING THE GAPS IN THE TRAINING OF QUANTITATIVE SKILLS At the heart of scientists' ability to determine whether models accurately and reliably describe data and the inferences that can be made from data, Brown said, is statistical reasoning, which itself is derived from a deep understanding of probability.
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From page 41... ...
. In addition to enhancing overall training in statistics, Brown suggested that graduate departments develop unique statistics modules tailored to five or so key subdisciplines of neuroscience.
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From page 42... ...
A recent white paper by an American Statistical Association working group offered a handful of suggestions to encourage the successful integration of statisticians into neuroscience training programs as it relates to the BRAIN Initiative (American Statistical Association, 2014)
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