April 28, 2013

Briefly

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  • BBC news report on the Amanda Knox case and misuse of statistics: judge did not believe that repeating a test could increase its accuracy (via Mark Wilson)
  • A tool for finding stories based on light makeover of press releases. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t detect recycling of stories from sites such as Medical Daily and Science Daily, which do enough rewriting to mask the sources.
  • New York Times opinion piece on evidence and science reporting — yes, distinguish experimental and observational studies, but also distinguish small exploratory studies from larger confirmatory ones. (via @brettkeller)
  • Using anecdotes rather than data to convince patients. On one hand, speaking to people in language they understand is good; on the other hand, you can use anecdotes to support anything.
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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »