Christopher A. Mebane 2015 <p><span>Criticisms of the uses of the no-observed-effect concentration (NOEC) and the lowest-observed-effect concentration (LOEC) and more generally the entire null hypothesis statistical testing scheme are hardly new or unique to the field of ecotoxicology [</span><a class="link__reference js-link__reference" title="Link to bibliographic citations" rel="references:#etc3108-bib-0001 #etc3108-bib-0002 #etc3108-bib-0003 #etc3108-bib-0004" href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.3108/full#etc3108-bib-0001">1-4</a><span>]. Among the criticisms of NOECs and LOECs is that statistically similar LOECs (in terms of&nbsp;</span><i>p</i><span>&nbsp;value) can represent drastically different levels of effect. For instance, my colleagues and I found that a battery of chronic toxicity tests with different species and endpoints yielded LOECs with minimum detectable differences ranging from 3% to 48% reductions from controls [</span><a class="link__reference js-link__reference" title="Link to bibliographic citation" rel="references:#etc3108-bib-0005" href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.3108/full#etc3108-bib-0005">5</a><span>].</span></p> application/pdf 10.1002/etc.3108 en John Wiley and Sonc, Inc. In Response: Biological arguments for selecting effect sizes in ecotoxicological testing—A governmental perspective article