The importance and validity of technical assumptions required for quantifying sperm production rates: a review.

All approaches for quantifying treatment effects on sperm production require one or more technical assumptions. Their validity can impact the integrity of the resulting data, but most had not been subjected to thorough, critical examination. This review was undertaken to 1) identify the assumptions required with each of several popular histometric methods for quantifying treatment effects on sperm production, 2) cite examples in which each assumption had failed, 3) assess potential consequences of the failure of each technical assumption, and 4) consider safeguards by which one might avoid misleading outcomes in the event that a specific assumption did not hold.