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228 points curmudgeon22 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.665s | source
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valleyjo ◴[] No.26612942[source]
>15 men participated in the study

This is no where near the number of participants that would be needed to make such a broad claim

replies(3): >>26613049 #>>26613176 #>>26613551 #
1. benmaraschino ◴[] No.26613176[source]
Counterpoint: the investigators used a crossover design, where each participant acts as their own control. Since within-subject variation <<< between-subject variation, this makes the effective sample size much, much higher than it would seem at first. In terms of efficiency, their design’s potentially equivalent to a vanilla parallel-arm trial with close to 100 subjects (or more) in each arm. So, you definitely can obtain solid evidence from N=15 (or less), if your study is carefully designed.

Sample size is only a very small part of the overall methodological picture—design matters too.