Question

A researcher is designing an experiment to determine whether the production of amylase increases when a person anticipates eating starchy food. She measures the amount of amylase in the saliva of 10 volunteers who are offered a bowl of pasta and of 10 other volunteers who are offered a bowl of scrambled eggs. In analyzing her data, she finds some variation in the amount of amylase among the samples within each group, but no significant difference in the amount of amylase between the two groups. She concludes that she needs to revise her experimental design and try her experiment again. What would be the best thing she could do to improve her experiment?

Answer
Add at least 30 more volunteers to the group presented with bowls of pasta and keep the number of volunteers in the scrambled egg group the same.
Allow one group of volunteers to smell a bowl of pasta while the other group only thinks about it and then test the amount of amylase produced by the two groups.
Measure the amount of amylase produced at the sight of a cracker by each volunteer who has just eaten a bowl of pasta.
Test the variation in the amount of amylase produced by each individual before and after being presented with a bowl of pasta.

Answer 1

The correct answer will be option-Test the variation in the amount of amylase produced by each individual before and after being presented with a bowl of pasta.

Step-by-step explanation:

In the given question, the scientist wants to study the increase in the amount of the starch digesting enzyme called amylase after eating the starchy food.

Scientist designed the experiment and measured the amount of amylase of the volunteers after eating the food. But this could lead to the error in the data as the scientist has not measured the initial amount of amylase of each volunteer before eating as the before values can act as a reference and the result values can be compared.

Thus, the selected option is the correct answer.

Answer 2

I think the best answer would be
Test the variation in the amount of amylase produced by each individual before and after being presented with a bowl of pasta.