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closeWas the study performed blind?
Posted by lukeholman on 15 Nov 2013 at 05:49 GMT
Interesting study!
However I was curious whether you performed the behavioral experiments blind with respect to treatment. That is, did the observer know whether the workers were being presented with extracts from an inseminated queen, plain hexane, etc? Ideally, the observer should not know which slide contains what substance, because it's a bit subjective whether a bee is interested in a slide of is just wandering around and happened to touch it. The observer's expectations could therefore have biased the results. In future, it'd be very easy to do this type of experiment blind - just get a friend to label the different queen extracts with a code that the observer cannot read. That way, we can be sure that the effect sizes are not inflated by the observer's subconscious expectations.
Thanks for an interesting read.
RE: Was the study performed blind?
ELNiño replied to lukeholman on 16 Nov 2013 at 22:23 GMT
Hello. Thank you for your comments and the question. I completely agree with you and yes the study was completed blind. In the future we will make sure to include this piece of information in our manuscripts.