[Mitarbeiter.zoologie] Antw: Positive Correlation between Pesticide Consumption and Longevity in Solitary Bees

[Christoph]

Hi Julia, hi all,
Sorry for stepping in into your discussion. I absolutely agree with
you that their data interpretation is not convincing. My guess is they
came up with this story so they could publish their data and spark a
discussion. Unfortunately, reviewers didn't seem to have picked up on
this.  It only took them 2 months from submission to publishing.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts,
Christoph

On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 8:18 AM Julia Osterman <jul.osterman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear all, Hi Ecki,
> I was reading the article this morning and I must say, I am quite upset. But, I think first of all their statistical analysis looks to me robust and they exclude "non-feeders", so that should be fine.
>
> However, their title, their abstract, and their conclusions from what they find are to me misleading. Especially in Corona times, we as researchers should have realised how important it is to clearly communicate our findings, as many journalists are not trained to be able to correctly interpret papers. Anyway, my critics are the following and I almost think we should write a response letter.
>
> Their findings are: NO differences between treatment groups on survival. This means the insecticide nor the herbicide nor the combination reduced survival compared to the control group. As a consequence, I would have chosen a title representing this result, as to me it seems like that was the reason to make this study.
>
> They also find no difference between treatment groups on how much the bees have eaten BUT they find that body size affected how much the mason bees ate: "however, emergence mass had a significant positive effect on consumption with heavier bees consuming more sucrose-solution". This means those bees that were bigger ate more. And then they tested if consumption affected longevity and in all groups, they find a positive correlation between consumption and longevity. IN ALL. No difference between treatment groups again. To me, this means either bees that eat a lot survive longer or those that are bigger survive longer, no matter if they got a pesticide or not. But in the abstract, the authors write: "As no significant difference in daily food consumption were observed across treatment groups, increasing food intake can be excluded as a factor leading to prolonged survival." This is just against my logic but maybe I am wrong.
>
> Also, they write in the simple abstract that their data suggests a possibly neglected trade-off between survival and reproduction in insect toxicology. I don't see how they came up with this?
>
> Maybe I am wrong, but this paper is a good example of miss-interpretations of results.
>
> What do you think?
> Thanks, Andreia for sending it around!
> Julia
>
> Am Di., 24. Nov. 2020 um 19:30 Uhr schrieb Eckart Stolle <eckart.stolle at zoologie.uni-halle.de>:
>>
>> looks like a nice paper for the connaisseurs of statistical fishing.
>>
>>
>> Probably any cloud of datapoints would give them a positive correlation
>> if they still include the bunch of non-eating weird ones.
>>
>> ... the headlines will be: "See! Whats we [Bayer] say? Pesticide are
>> even good for bees!"
>>
>>
>>
>> ================================
>> Dr. Eckart Stolle
>> Institut für Biology
>> Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
>> Hoher Weg 8, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany
>> eckart.stolle at zoologie.uni-halle.de
>> 0049 345 55 26502
>> Fax 0049 345 55 27428
>> ================================
>> >>> Andreia Teixeira <andreia.teixeira90 at gmail.com> 24.11.20 12.24 Uhr
>> >>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> The paper attached may be of interest, probably some of you have seen it
>> already.
>>
>> Best,
>> Andreia
>> --
>>
>> PhD Student
>> Martin-Luther University
>> Institute of Biology
>> General Zoology Group
>>
>> Hoher Weg 8, 06120 Halle, Germany
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Julia Osterman
> PhD candidate
> General Zoology
> Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
> jul.osterman at gmail.com
>
> Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH - UFZ
> Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany
> julia.osterman at ufz.de
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