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sfzombie13 t1_itg7fa3 wrote

from the article - “As this was the first study using stem cell models of PTSD, it was important to study a large number of individuals,” said Daniel Paull, PhD, NYSCF Senior Vice President, Discovery & Platform Development, and co-leader of the study. “ it sure seems to me that 39 people is far from a large number of people, but i don't work in nueroscience, so it may be. anyone care to venture an informed opinion?

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triffid_boy t1_ithf16s wrote

It wouldn't be enough for a medical study, trial or intervention or whatever, but it's a different kind of study. They're not studying people or interventions per se, they're studying the neurons/genetics. Having 39 samples for this seems pretty good. If you're suggesting they should have generated neurons from stem cells from hundreds of people ... Good god man have mercy on the lab people!

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sfzombie13 t1_ithfzix wrote

no, i'm suggesting they rephrase the statement, as 39 is not a large number of people for ANY type of study. i would think thousands would suffice for large, not under 50. semantics mostly, but sure, now that you've mentioned it, it needs to be at least in the hundreds to be accurate i'd think, or else they'd be getting at most three people per group selected for. it's hard to get a very diverse group of anything with only 39 members, especially with the differences in people.

there could be more than 10 different geographical influences across the us, and then throw in ethnic groups, gender, and economic class and you've got like one representative from each. not much of a diverse study at all that way.

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triffid_boy t1_ithkgw0 wrote

The studies are not on the people, they're trying to identify genetic targets and generate models to use in vitro. It's completely valid.

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sfzombie13 t1_itiegsp wrote

no, but they're using people. that's where the genes come from, and with only 39 of them, and all of them vets with ptsd, how do they know they have enough of a diverse sample to make any meaningful connections that can't be explained by chance?

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triffid_boy t1_itih0qo wrote

A reasonable case is given through the other studies in the paper to be honest, e.g demonstrating that they have similar transcriptomic signatures to post mortem brains with PTSD.

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alexashleyfox t1_ithm1hh wrote

39 is a lot of people to do research of this complexity on. And I’ve noticed that neuroscience as a whole tends towards lower n values because of the time and expense of collecting the data. Like you can only pay for so many fMRIs.

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