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Reporting and Misreporting of Sex Differences in the Biological Sciences

View ORCID ProfileYesenia Garcia-Sifuentes, View ORCID ProfileDonna L. Maney
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.28.446238
Yesenia Garcia-Sifuentes
1Graduate Program in Neuroscience
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Donna L. Maney
1Graduate Program in Neuroscience
2Department of Psychology, Emory University
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  • For correspondence: dmaney@emory.edu
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Abstract

As part of an initiative to improve rigor and reproducibility in biomedical research, the U. S. National Institutes of Health now requires the consideration of sex as a biological variable in preclinical studies. This new policy has been interpreted by some as a call to compare males and females with each other. Researchers testing for sex differences may not be trained to do so, however, increasing risk for misinterpretation of results. Using a list of recently published articles curated by Woitowich et al. (eLife, 2020; 9:e56344), we examined reports of sex differences and non-differences across nine biological disciplines. Sex differences were claimed in the majority of the 147 articles we analyzed; however, statistical evidence supporting those differences was often missing. For example, when a sex-specific effect of a manipulation was claimed, authors usually had not tested statistically whether females and males responded differently. Thus, sex-specific effects may be over-reported. In contrast, we also encountered practices that could mask sex differences, such as pooling the sexes without first testing for a difference. Our findings support the need for continuing efforts to train researchers how to test for and report sex differences in order to promote rigor and reproducibility in biomedical research.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 31, 2021.
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Reporting and Misreporting of Sex Differences in the Biological Sciences
Yesenia Garcia-Sifuentes, Donna L. Maney
bioRxiv 2021.05.28.446238; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.28.446238
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Reporting and Misreporting of Sex Differences in the Biological Sciences
Yesenia Garcia-Sifuentes, Donna L. Maney
bioRxiv 2021.05.28.446238; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.28.446238

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