The purpose of a study by Miyajima et al. (A-34) was to evaluate the changes of tumor cell contamination in bone marrow (BM) and peripheral blood (PB) during the clinical course of patients with advanced neuroblastoma. Their procedure involved detecting tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) mRNA to clarify the appropriate source and time for harvesting hematopoietic stem cells for transplantation.

The authors used Fisher’s exact test in the analysis of their data. If available, read their article and decide if you agree that Fisher’s exact text was the appropriate technique to use. If you agree, duplicate their procedure and see if you get the same results. If you disagree, explain why.