# acad: oops! 78.1% of biomed. sci. studies use only parametric tests ...

<< Transparent reporting is essential for the critical evaluation of studies. However, the reporting of statistical methods for studies in the biomedical sciences is often limited. >>

<< Nonparametric tests, such as the Mann-Whitney U test, Wilcoxon sign rank test and Kruskal Wallis test, may sometimes be preferable as sample sizes in basic biomedical science research are often too small to determine the data distribution. However, these tests are not commonly used. A systematic review of physiology studies showed that 3.8% used only non-parametric tests to compare continuous data, 13.6% used a combination of parametric and non-parametric tests, and 78.1% of studies used only parametric tests >>

Tracey L. Weissgerber, Oscar Garcia-Valencia, et al. Meta-Research: Why we need to report more than 'Data were Analyzed by t-tests or ANOVA'. eLife 2018; 7:e36163. Dec 21, 2018 doi: 10.7554/eLife.36163

https://elifesciences.org/articles/36163