(a) Nested loop plot of the proportion of statistically significant animal and human findings over all simulation repetitions depending on the simulation conditions, i.e. animal and human effect sizes, heterogeneity across animal and human studies, animal study sample sizes, and the number of animal studies pooled together to obtain the animal finding. The dotted horizontal lines represent a proportion of 2.5% and 80%. The legend under each plot shows which of the progressively thinner columns in the plot correspond to which combination of simulation conditions. Each horizontal line segment contains the proportion of significant findings under each combination of conditions. For example, the segment highlighted with arrow represents the proportion of significant findings in the animal studies, when the smaller sample size was used, the animal effect size was small, there was no heterogeneity across the animal studies, and 5 animal studies were pooled. (b) Nested loop plot of the average animal effect size over all simulation repetitions, depending on the simulation conditions and the decision criterion applied on the animal finding. The average effect size observed in the human studies is not affected by the applied criterion. Note that since the criterion was not added as a simulation condition, the represented data is correlated, as the same simulation repetitions are used to calculate the average effect size for the strict, lenient and no criterion.

Grid of nested loop plots of the proportions of animal-human pairs for which the different metrics flagged successful translation across simulation conditions under no criterion.

Each of the plots in the grid represent another animal-human finding combination. In the first column, for example, the human studies are all simulated under the null hypothesis of no effect. Note that the results for the replication BF and the meta-analysis are not shown here for better readability. The dotted horizontal lines represent α2 = 0.000625, α = 0.025, 1 − β = 0.8 and (1 − β)2 = 0.64. All animal studies in this representation are simulated with a small sample size per group (nA = 10).

Summary of the simulation factors used to generate animal and human studies (varied in a fully factorial way).

Grid of nested loop plots of the proportions of animal-human pairs for which the different metrics flagged successful translation across simulation conditions under no criterion.

Each of the plots in the grid represent another animal-human finding combination. In the first column, for example, the human studies are all simulated under the null hypothesis of no effect. The dotted horizontal lines represent α2= 0.000625, α = 0.025, 1 − β = 0.8 and (1 − β)2= 0.64. All animal studies in this representation are simulated with a small sample size per group (nA = 10).

Grid of nested loop plots of the proportions of animal-human pairs for which the different metrics flagged successful translation across simulation conditions under no criterion.

Each of the plots in the grid represent another animal-human finding combination. In the first column, for example, the human studies are all simulated under the null hypothesis of no effect. The dotted horizontal lines represent α2= 0.000625, α = 0.025, 1 − β = 0.8 and (1 − β)2= 0.64. All animal studies in this representation are simulated with a larger sample size per group (nA = 20).

Grid of nested loop plots of the proportions of animal-human pairs for which the different metrics flagged successful translation across simulation conditions under no criterion.

Each of the plots in the grid represent another animal-human finding combination. In the first column, for example, the human studies are all simulated under the null hypothesis of no effect. Note that the results for the replication BF and the meta-analysis are not shown here for better readability. The dotted horizontal lines represent α2 = 0.000625, α = 0.025, 1 − β = 0.8 and (1 − β)2 = 0.64. All animal studies in this representation are simulated with a larger sample size per group (nA = 20).