An environmental scientist said ‘I did a small pilot experiment with two replicates in each treatment and got the result we hoped for. I didn't have time to do a bigger experiment but that didn't matter - if you get the result you want with a small experiment, the same thing will happen if you run it with many more replicates. So when I published the result I said I used twelve replicates in each treatment.' Please comment thoroughly and carefully on all aspects of this statement.