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There are two defects. The mixed fit supplies a restricted maximum likelihood, whereas the ordinary fit supplies an ordinary log-likelihood, so their difference is not a likelihood-ratio test statistic. Also, $H_0:{\tau }^2=0$ lies on the boundary of ${\tau }^2\ge 0$; the usual Wilks theorem does not give a ${\chi }_1^2$ null law.

A valid approach first refits the mixed model by ordinary maximum likelihood estimation, setting REML to false, and fits the same fixed effects under $H_0$. For $V={\tau }^{2}Z{Z}^T+{\sigma }^{2}I$, maximizeover $\beta ,{\sigma }^2>0,{\tau }^2\ge 0$, and separately over $\beta ,{\sigma }^2>0$ with ${\tau }^2=0$. Set $T=2({\hat{\ell }}_1-{\hat{\ell }}_0)\ge 0$.

For finite-sample calibration, use the location-scale invariant simulation test for a Gaussian variance component. With the actual $X,Z$ fixed, simulate $B$ independent vectors $Y^{(b)}\sim N(0,I_{176})$, refit both models by ordinary maximum likelihood estimation to each, and calculate $T_b$ in exactly the same way. Under $H_0$, $Y=X\beta +\sigma z$. Translating by a vector in the column space of $X$ and multiplying by a positive scalar preserves the statistic: both maximized log-likelihoods acquire the same scale constant. Thus this simulation has the correct null law without knowing $\beta$ or $\sigma$. A conservative Monte Carlo p-value isIn the usual regular limit with increasing independent groups, a variance-component likelihood-ratio test at a boundary instead uses $\frac{1}{2}{\delta }_0+\frac{1}{2}{\chi }_1^2$: for $T>0$, its approximate tail probability is $\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{Pr}({\chi }_1^2\ge T)$, and at $T=0$ the nonrandomized p-value is one. This approximation is not an exact guarantee for sixteen rats. Alternatively one can compare consistently defined restricted likelihoods with the same $X$ and simulate their restricted-ratio null distribution, as in the RLRsim documentation.