Stats Chat

As part of International Clinical Trials Day, the UK National Health Service is launching “It’s ok to ask”:

Clinical research is the way in which we improve treatments in the NHS. In many cases doctors will tell patients about research but we also need patients to ask about it and keep research at the top of the NHS agenda.

In a recent consumer poll, only 21% of patients and the public said that they would feel confident asking their doctor about research opportunities – a low number.

That is why during 2013/14 The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is promoting the fact that it’s OK to ask about clinical research.

The campaign is aimed at patients, medical professionals and the public. Everyone can get involved and help spread the word that it’s OK to ask about clinical research.

The campaign is in the UK, but it’s ok to ask in NZ too.

The Herald says “Half of NZ workers eyeing new jobs – survey”

The photo caption even says “Of those working in property and construction, 63 per cent said they were likely to look for a new job in the next year” so they survey apparently breaks down its sample into a bunch of subcategories.

So, how reliable is this survey?  The Herald doesn’t say much about methodology, except that

The online survey canvassed 260 “professionals” working in jobs ranging from entry-level to senior management.

That’s not a lot, and you really have to wonder how they were sampled.  The Herald gets points for linking to the full glossy pamplet, but its methodology section say, in full

The Michael Page Employee Intentions Report is based  on the online survey responses of 260 professionals in New Zealand. Participants represent a range of professional occupation groups and hold positions that range from entry level through to senior management. The scope of the report includes key employee insights into preferences for attraction and retention, salary expectations, benefits and work-life balance and their views on the predicted employment outlook.

This might not be a bogus poll, but the lack of information is really not encouraging.  The report doesn’t give any demographic information that might help verify how representative it is, but it does say that 76% of those planning to change jobs intend to use recruitment consultants.

All in all, clearly a win for the flacks, not the hacks.

From the Motor Trade Association (via Scoop), an infographic that really would be better as a table or list rather than what appears to be a set of four pie charts.

Adding to the problems, the survey of 1063 vehicles was for a single half-hour period on one day, and 50% of the half-hour period was before the start of official darkness (though they say visibility was low enough to make headlights necessary).

Congratulations to Simon Connell for his nomination of this stat of the week from the Otago Daily Times:

“In a three-month trial in Manukau [of an automatic number plate recognition unit], police recovered 15 stolen vehicles, took 180 disqualified, forbidden or suspended drivers off the road, and recovered stolen property from various offenders, [Southern District acting road policing manager Senior Sergeant Steve Larking] said.

”So the benefits are clear.””

Simon makes an excellent point about evidence:

“I’m not sure if this is strictly a statistic or not, but this story (which reads like a copy/paste from a press release) seems to accept without question the benefits of the automatic number plate recognition unit.
We can’t actually make any assessment of the benefits of the unit without some information about how many stolen cards would have been recovered etc. without the unit installed. It does seem like the unit is useful, but it’s hard to judge whether or not it’s worth the $40-$50k price tag without further information.”

Each week, we would like to invite readers of Stats Chat to submit nominations for our Stat of the Week competition and be in with the chance to win an iTunes voucher.

Here’s how it works:

• Anyone may add a comment on this post to nominate their Stat of the Week candidate before midday Friday May 24 2013.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of May 18 – 24 2013 inclusive.
• Quote the statistic, when and where it was published and tell us why it should be our Stat of the Week.

Next Monday at midday we’ll announce the winner of this week’s Stat of the Week competition, and start a new one.

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Two hundred and sixty six years ago today, James Lind began what is regarded as the first proper controlled clinical trial

On the 20th May, 1747, I took twelve patients in the scurvy on board the Salisbury at sea. Their cases were as similar as I could have them. They all in general had putrid gums, the spots and lassitude, with weakness of their knees. They lay together in one place, being a proper apartment for the sick in the fore-hold; and had one diet in common to all, viz., water gruel sweetened with sugar in the morning; fresh mutton broth often times for dinner; at other times puddings, boiled biscuit with sugar etc.; and for supper barley, raisins, rice and currants, sago and wine, or the like. Two of these were ordered each a quart of cyder a day. Two others took twenty five gutts of elixir vitriol three times a day upon an empty stomach, using a gargle strongly acidulated with it for their mouths. Two others took two spoonfuls of vinegar three times a day upon an empty stomach, having their gruels and their other food well acidulated with it, as also the gargle for the mouth. Two of the worst patients, with the tendons in the ham rigid (a symptom none the rest had) were put under a course of sea water. Of this they drank half a pint every day and sometimes more or less as it operated by way of gentle physic. Two others had each two oranges and one lemon given them every day. These they eat with greediness at different times upon an empty stomach. They continued but six days under this course, having consumed the quantity that could be spared. The two remaining patients took the bigness of a nutmeg three times a day of an electuray recommended by an hospital surgeon made of garlic, mustard seed, rad. raphan., balsam of Peru and gum myrrh, using for common drink narley water well acidulated with tamarinds, by a decoction of wich, with the addition of cremor tartar, they were gently purged three or four times during the course.

The consequence was that the most sudden and visible good effects were perceived from the use of the oranges and lemons; one of those who had taken them being at the end of six days fit four duty. The spots were not indeed at that time quite off his body, nor his gums sound; but without any other medicine than a gargarism or elixir of vitriol he became quite healthy before we came into Plymouth, which was on the 16th June. The other was the best recovered of any in his condition, and being now deemed pretty well was appointed nurse to the rest of the sick …

Lind knew very little about scurvy apart from the typical progress of the disease, and he had no real idea of how the treatments might work.  That’s a handicap in coming up with ideas for treatment, but not in doing fair tests of whether treatments work.

The trial didn’t have an untreated group: all the patients got one of the treatments recommended by experts.  There’s no need for a controlled trial to have an untreated group — if there is an existing treatment, you want to compare to that treatment; if there is none, you may want to compare immediate vs delayed treatment.

Despite the dramatic success of fruit juice in the trial, it wasn’t adopted as a treatment. That, sadly, can still be the case today.  New drugs or surgical techniques are taken up enthusiastically, but boring interventions like nurse home visits or surgery checklists get less attention. Still, things are much better than they were even twenty years ago. Nearly all of medicine accepts the idea of randomized controlled comparison, and it is spreading to other areas such as development economics.

There are two excellent, free books about clinical trials and health choices: Testing Treatments, from the James Lind Initiative, and Smart Health Choices, from Les Irwig (at Sydney Uni) and coworkers.

Much of clinical trials development is unapologetically technical, but there are important areas where public participation can help:

• The James Lind Alliance asks patients and clinicians to say what questions matter most.  Clinical trials still tend to answer questions that are scientifically interesting or commercially important, not what actually matters most to patients
• The Cochrane Collaboration is attempting to collect and summarise all randomized trials.  The Cochrane Consumers Network is for non-specialist participation — in particular as Consumer Referees to help ensure that summaries of research address the questions that are important to consumers and are presented in language that consumers can understand.
• Ethics Committees that review clinical trials and other human research in New Zealand are required to have non-specialist community members. This is a substantial commitment, but one that is important if ethics committees are to be more than just red tape.
• And if you haven’t yet signed the AllTrials petition, calling for the results of all clinical trials to be published so we can know what treatments work, now would be an excellent time.

From the University of San Francisco. The winners were all interactive maps, showing, respectively: pollution, population change, and child mortality.

Surprisingly addictive

• Color: match colours under a time limit
• Munsell Hue Test: arrange colours in order between two endpoints.

From the Wellcome Trust Monitor, a survey examining knowledge and attitudes related to biomedical science in the UK

The survey found a high level of interest in medical research among the public – more than seven in ten adults (75 per cent) and nearly six out of ten of young people (58 per cent). Despite this, understanding of how research is conducted is not deep – and levels of understanding have fallen since 2009. While most adults (67 per cent) and half of all young people (50 per cent) recognise the concept of a controlled experiment in science, most cannot articulate why this process is effective.

Two-thirds of the adults that were questioned trusted medical practitioners and university scientists to give them accurate information about medical research. This fell to just over one in ten (12 per cent) for government departments and ministers. Journalists scored lowest on trustworthiness — only 8 per cent of adults trusted them to give accurate information about medical research, although this was an improvement on the 2009 figure of 4 per cent.

This is a common question from our students. Unfortunately our perspective does not always lend itself easily to life outside of research and academia, as what I look for in a curriculum vitae and in a job interview is usually with respect to hiring someone who will become an academic staff member. However, fellow statistician, and the Young Statisticians representative for the New Zealand Statistical Association executive committee, Kylie Maxwell has posted her own experience as part of the International Year of Statistics.