Experimental Design for Biologists - Tapa dura

[David Glass] has written an extraordinarily concise, highly instructive book based on a course he developed. It guides potential and practicing researchers through scientific epistemology and sound research design. The author uses extensive application examples, especially biological ones. Early chapters focus on philosophical constructs related to research issues, especially critical rationalism. The volume presents effective framing of both testing a hypothesis and a question/answer format. --Choice

Experimental Design for Biologists explains how to establish the framework for an experimental project, including the effects of using a hypothesis–driven approach versus a question/answer approach, how to set up a system, design experiments within that system, and how to determine and use the correct set of controls. Separate chapters are devoted to the negative control, the positive control, and other categories of controls which are perhaps less recognized, such as “assumption controls”, and “experimentalist controls.” Further, there are sections on establishing the experimental system, which includes performing critical “system controls”. While the book does reference the use of statistics, statistics is not the focus of this book, but rather the way the scientist should go about framing an experimental question, establishing a validated system to answer the question, and deriving verifiable models from experimental data. There is often very little formal training in this area for biologists; therefore this text serves as an essential teaching tool for understanding the theory and practice of designing a research plan.