Nature Statistics Reporting Skill

Use this skill to make manuscript statistics transparent, reproducible, and appropriately bounded. It is a reporting and review skill, not a substitute for a statistician reanalysing raw data unless the user supplies the data and explicitly asks for computation.

Default stance

• Prioritize design transparency over decorative statistical language.
• Separate three questions: what was measured, what unit was analysed, and what inference was claimed.
• Treat the independent experimental unit as the default n; do not silently treat cells, fields of view, repeated readings, spectra, model runs, or technical replicates as independent biological or experimental samples.
• Prefer effect sizes, uncertainty intervals, sample sizes, and exact test definitions over significance-only phrasing.
• State missing information as AUTHOR_INPUT_NEEDED instead of inventing sample sizes, tests, software, corrections, exclusion rules, randomization, or blinding.
• If a journal-specific instruction, study-type guideline, or field standard conflicts with this skill, follow the more specific source and mark the source used.

Accepted inputs

The skill may receive: