Memory transfer between snails challenges view of how brain remembers

Re:Memory transfer between snails challenges view of how bra... by omtinez on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @01:45AM (#17071905)

Maybe someone can take a second look at the paper. I couldn't find the published version, just a manuscript[1] (kudos to the authors for making it available under CC license). But... The only reference I could find about the sample size says:

> "To prepare a single RNA injection, the pleural-pedal and abdominal ganglia were removed from 4-5 sensitization-trained animals—or from 4-5 untrained controls—immediately after the 48-h posttest"

4-5??? I really hope that I'm missing something here, otherwise I find truly depressing how low the bar is for scientific journals.

[1] http://www.eneuro.org/content/eneuro/early/2018/05/14/ENEURO...

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Re:Memory transfer between snails challenges view of how bra... by klmr on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @05:46AM (#17072787)

Figure legend 1D says: “Control RNA (5.4 ± 3.9 s, n = 7) and Trained RNA (38.0 ± 4.6 s, n = 7)”

That’s a relatively low n but it might be sufficient. However, they don’t explain how the number was reduced from ~30 donor animals to 7 test animals. This might be entirely reasonable though (I know nothing about working with Aplysia).

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Re:Memory transfer between snails challenges view of how bra... by rf15 on Tuesday May 15, 2018 @03:08AM (#17072184)

I'm sorry, Sturgeon's Law is in full effect and the current system encourages spamming out low-tier research for grants/etc.. So the bar is on a completely different metric altogether from what a normal person would expect

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