R help - May 2008 - In fact this is a Stats question, but... "The return."

*Thanks* all those who took the time to help me (even if the  
"question" was not related to - the use of - R).

Now I think I can soundly make my point w/ the referee (can I use your  
replies? If so I intend to properly cite its use?!?).

Regards, Eduardo Esteves

ps - Sorry for not explaining the "biological details" of my posting:
RNA/DNA is the ratio of RNA content to DNA content obtained for  
individual fish larvae (plus for each one I noted if it had visible  
prey items in the gut or not, thus the levels Prey and Empty of factor  
Gut); and sl is the standard length (distance from the tip of snout to  
the posterior extremity of the hypurals, the expanded bones at the end  
of the backbone that support the caudal fin, in mm) of the specimens.  
In the MS, I consider the relationship RNA/DNA to sl to be  
biologically irrelevant (due to the very low r2) although  
statistically significant. Furthermore, no effect of gut content upon  
that relationship is significant (facilitating further analysis of  
pooled data).

eesteves at ualg.pt wrote:
> *Thanks* all those who took the time to help me (even if the 
> "question" was not related to - the use of - R).
>
> Now I think I can soundly make my point w/ the referee (can I use your 
> replies? If so I intend to properly cite its use?!?).
In general, I think it is best not to cite this kind of replies, at 
least not in publications. Steve E's note is a bit of an eye-opener in 
that regard: There could in fact be serious problems in your analysis 
without respondents realizing it (e.g., you could have 1700 larvae, but 
they came from only 10 batches of eggs with a strong within-batch 
correlation). Judging from the text below I wouldn't expect that this is 
the case, but the risk is there. The general problem is that it is very 
difficult to give credit without also assigning some level of 
responsibility.

    -pd
>
> Regards, Eduardo Esteves
>
> ps - Sorry for not explaining the "biological details" of my
posting:
> RNA/DNA is the ratio of RNA content to DNA content obtained for 
> individual fish larvae (plus for each one I noted if it had visible 
> prey items in the gut or not, thus the levels Prey and Empty of factor 
> Gut); and sl is the standard length (distance from the tip of snout to 
> the posterior extremity of the hypurals, the expanded bones at the end 
> of the backbone that support the caudal fin, in mm) of the specimens. 
> In the MS, I consider the relationship RNA/DNA to sl to be 
> biologically irrelevant (due to the very low r2) although 
> statistically significant. Furthermore, no effect of gut content upon 
> that relationship is significant (facilitating further analysis of 
> pooled data).
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide 
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph:  (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)              FAX: (+45) 35327907