Journal of Dental Research, Vol 55, 476-480, Copyright © 1976 by International & American Associations for Dental Research Online Journals
Selection of an experimental unit in rat caries studies
W. W. Briner
In two separate experiments, none of the 14 subunits examined consistently
ranked dentifrices similarly to the ranking obtained when the individual
rat was used as the experimental unit. Arbitrarily dividing the rat into
subunits and then comparing results among these subunits may lead to false
conclusions since the rankings using subunits vary within each experiment
and from experiment to experiment.