Artificial data sets were generated with negative binomial distributed counts for a fixed total number of 10 000 genes. The expected count size varied between genes according to a gamma distribution with shape parameter 0.5, an ad hoc choice that happened to mimic the size distribution of the carcinoma data. The average dispersion was set to 0.16 (BCV = 0.4). In one simulation, all genes had the same true dispersion. In the other simulation, true dispersions were randomly generated around 0.16 according to an inverse chisquare distribution with 20 degrees of freedom.