Pseudoreplication and the Design of Ecological Field Experiments

Excerpts

Pseudoreplication is defined as the use of inferential statistics to test for treatment effects with data from experiments where either treatments are not replicated (though samples may be) or replicates are not statistically independent. In ANOVA terminology, it is the testing for treatment effects with an error term inappropriate to the hypothesis being considered. Scrutiny of 176 experimental studies published between 1960 and the present revealed that pseudoreplication occurred in 27% of them, or 48% of all such studies that applied inferential statistics. The incidence of pseudoreplication is especially high in studies of marine benthos and small mammals.

Reference

Stuart H Hurlbert “Pseudoreplication and the Design of Ecological Field Experiments” (1984) DOI: 10.2307/1942661

@Article{hurlbert1984,
  title = {Pseudoreplication and the Design of Ecological Field Experiments},
  volume = {54},
  issn = {1557-7015},
  url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1942661},
  doi = {10.2307/1942661},
  number = {2},
  journal = {Ecological Monographs},
  publisher = {Wiley},
  author = {Hurlbert, Stuart H},
  year = {1984},
  month = {jun},
  pages = {187–211}
}