Biology subjects

Carneiro, C. F. D.

Publications and source records attributed to Carneiro, C. F. D..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Multi-Lab Testing of Early Preclinical Discoveries Identifies Promising Treatments

A fundamental challenge in drug development is the frequent failure of early laboratory research to translate into clinical benefit. One promising solution is to confirm findings from exploratory single-laboratory studies across multiple laboratories before clinical testing. We investigated this approach following the conduct of preclinical multi-laboratory studies across different fields of medicine. For this, we evaluated effect sizes, experimental rigor, and a set of criteria to identify determinants of confirmation success. When tested under increased rigor, only a fraction of multi-laboratory studies confirmed the initial results. The underlying effect size reduction was associated with outcome-relevant experimental differences between exploratory and confirmatory stages. In summary, multi-laboratory studies proved highly informative and served as an effective filter for promising treatments.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2025

Estimating the replicability of Brazilian biomedical science

Concerns over the replicability and reproducibility of published research have grown in many research fields, but empirical data to inform policies are still scarce. Biomedical research in Brazil expanded rapidly over the last three decades, with no systematic assessment of the replicability of its findings. With this in mind, we set up the Brazilian Reproducibility Initiative, a multicenter replication of published experiments from Brazilian science using three common experimental methods: the MTT assay, the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and the elevated plus maze (EPM). A total of 56 laboratories performed 143 replications of 56 experiments; of these, 90 replications of 45 experiments were considered valid by an independent committee. Replication rates for these experiments varied between 20 and 44% according to five predefined criteria. In median terms, ratios between group means were 58% lower in replications than in original experiments, while coefficients of variation were 82% higher. Effect size decrease was smaller for MTT experiments, original results with less variability and those considered more challenging to replicate, while t values for replications were positively correlated with researcher predictions about replicability, and negatively correlated with the rate of publications by the original articles last author. Deviations from preregistered protocols were very common in replications, most frequently due to reasons inherent to the experimental model or related to infrastructure and logistics. Our results highlight factors that limit the replicability of results published by researchers in Brazil and suggest ways by which this scenario can be improved.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2022

Mapping the content of comments on bioRxiv and medRxiv preprints

IntroductionPreprints have been increasingly used in biomedical sciences, providing the opportunity for research to be publicly assessed before journal publication. With the increase in attention over preprints during the COVID-19 pandemic, we decided to assess the content of comments left on preprint platforms. MethodsPreprints posted on bioRxiv and medRxiv in 2020 were accessed through each platforms API, and a random sample of preprints that had received between 1 and 20 comments was analyzed. Comments were evaluated in triplicate by independent evaluators using an instrument that assessed their features and general content. Results7.3% of preprints received at least 1 comment during a mean follow-up of 7.5 months. Analyzed comments had a median size of 43 words. Criticisms, corrections or suggestions were the most prevalent type of content, followed by compliments or positive appraisals and questions. Most critical comments regarded interpretation, data collection and methodological design, while compliments were usually about relevance and implications. ConclusionsOnly a small percentage of preprints posted in 2020 in bioRxiv and medRxiv received comments in these platforms. When present, however, these comments address content that is similar to that analyzed by traditional peer review. A more precise taxonomy of peer review functions would be desirable to describe whether post-publication peer review fulfills these roles.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2022

A meta-analysis of the effect of protein synthesis inhibitors on rodent fear conditioning

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been increasingly recognized for their potential value in pre-clinical research, but their applications have not been extensively explored in behavioral neuroscience. In this work, we studied protein synthesis inhibition, a classic intervention used to disrupt fear learning, reconsolidation, and extinction in rodents, to explore how meta-analyses can identify potential moderators of its effect. We initially performed separate meta-analyses for different injection sites and target sessions to evaluate the effect of the intervention in various scenarios. Heterogeneity was further investigated by multilevel meta-regression models aggregating various sites, with article or research group as additional levels. We detected robust effects of protein synthesis inhibitors on training and reconsolidation, but not on extinction, possibly due to the lower number of studies on the latter. Our analyses identified some well-established moderators, such as intervention timing and reexposure duration. However, other factors proposed as boundary conditions for reconsolidation, such as memory age and training strength, were not associated with effect size. While our results point to the value of meta-analyses in consolidating findings from the literature, we believe that associations suggested by data synthesis should ideally be verified by well-powered, rigorous confirmatory experiments.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Comparing quality of reporting between preprints and peer-reviewed articles in the biomedical literature

BackgroundPreprint usage is growing rapidly in the life sciences; however, questions remain on the relative quality of preprints when compared to published articles. An objective dimension of quality that is readily measurable is completeness of reporting, as transparency can improve the readers ability to independently interpret data and reproduce findings. MethodsIn this observational study, we initially compared independent samples of articles published in bioRxiv and in PubMed-indexed journals in 2016 using a quality of reporting questionnaire. After that, we performed paired comparisons between preprints from bioRxiv to their own peer-reviewed versions in journals. ResultsPeer-reviewed articles had, on average, higher quality of reporting than preprints, although the difference was small, with absolute differences of 5.0% [95% CI 1.4, 8.6] and 4.7% [95% CI 2.4, 7.0] of reported items in the independent samples and paired sample comparison, respectively. There were larger differences favoring peer-reviewed articles in subjective ratings of how clearly titles and abstracts presented the main findings and how easy it was to locate relevant reporting information. Changes in reporting from preprints to peer-reviewed versions did not correlate with the impact factor of the publication venue or with the time lag from bioRxiv to journal publication. ConclusionsOur results suggest that, on average, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is associated with improvement in quality of reporting. They also show that quality of reporting in preprints in the life sciences is within a similar range as that of peer-reviewed articles, albeit slightly lower on average, supporting the idea that preprints should be considered valid scientific contributions.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2017

Effect size and statistical power in the rodent fear conditioning literature - a systematic review

Proposals to increase research reproducibility frequently call for focusing on effect sizes instead of p values, as well as for increasing the statistical power of experiments. However, it is unclear to what extent these two concepts are indeed taken into account in basic biomedical science. To study this in a real-case scenario, we performed a systematic review of effect sizes and statistical power in studies on learning of rodent fear conditioning, a widely used behavioral task to evaluate memory. Our search criteria yielded 410 experiments comparing control and treated groups in 122 articles. Interventions had a mean effect size of 29.5%, and amnesia caused by memory-impairing interventions was nearly always partial. Mean statistical power to detect the average effect size observed in well-powered experiments with significant differences (37.2%) was 65%, and was lower among studies with non-significant results. Only one article reported a sample size calculation, and our estimated sample size to achieve 80% power considering typical effect sizes and variances (15 animals per group) was reached in only 12.2% of experiments. Actual effect sizes correlated with effect size inferences made by readers on the basis of textual descriptions of results only when findings were non-significant, and neither effect size nor power correlated with study quality indicators, number of citations or impact factor of the publishing journal. In summary, effect sizes and statistical power have a wide distribution in the rodent fear conditioning literature, but do not seem to have a large influence on how results are described or cited. Failure to take these concepts into consideration might limit attempts to improve reproducibility in this field of science.

neuroscience↗