Assess Biological Relevance of Gene Expression Differences

Provides a heuristic interpretation of whether a statistically significant difference in gene expression is likely to be biologically meaningful, based on effect size magnitude and p-value.

Usage

flag.biological.relevance(effect.size, p.value, alpha = 0.05)

Arguments

effect.size

Numeric. Cohen's d or other standardized effect size.

p.value

Numeric. P-value from a statistical test.

alpha

Numeric. Significance threshold used for the p-value comparison. Default is 0.05.

Value

Character string. One of three heuristic labels:

"Potentially biologically meaningful"

p < alpha and |d| > 0.5

"Statistically significant but small effect"

p < alpha and |d| <= 0.5

"No strong evidence of biological relevance"

p >= alpha

Details

These rules are heuristic and intended as guidance rather than definitive biological conclusions. The thresholds for effect size (0.5) and significance are conventional starting points; domain knowledge should inform interpretation. This function is called internally by analyze.gene() using the same alpha passed to that function.

Examples

# \donttest{
flag.biological.relevance(effect.size = 0.6, p.value = 0.01)
#> [1] "Potentially biologically meaningful"
# }