Article Review
How many people were lost to follow-up or otherwise dropped from the study?
If the study involves animals, how many animals were used in the study?
What was the genetic background of those animals? How was the disease or other experimental condition induced?
If the study utilizes cell lines, to what degree do the genetics of the cell line reflect a real, healthy cell? Are the cells from the same organism as the phenomenon being studied? Are the researchers certain that their cell line isn’t contaminated by HeLa cells?
Are the dosages of drugs reflective of what a patient might actually take, or were the authors going for the extreme case?
How were the images in the figures produced/processed?
Were potentially confounding variables controlled well? Is there anything that the authors might not have thought of?
Did the technology used help or hinder the data-gathering process? Was the fancy equipment used really necessary, or were the authors just after a “gee-whiz” reaction from the reader? Would this experiment have been better performed with less (or more) use of technology?
