August 2, 2014

Briefly

  • Nicely balanced Guardian article on genetic sequencing in rare diseases

Some diagnoses open up a whole world of support groups and treatments for patients who previously had no name to put to their disorder. But even when there is no treatment, no sudden rush of hope and relief, families are grateful for the diagnosis.

  • Andrew Gelman:

    The result is what I call the “scientific surprise” two-step: (1) When defending the plausibility of your results, you emphasize that they are just as expected from a well-estabilished scientific theory with a rich literature; (2) When publicizing your results… you emphasize the novelty and surprise value.

  • From the copyediting blog “Ten Minutes Past Deadline”, an example of how statistical errors avoid getting into print (on a good day, God willing and the creek don’t rise)

 

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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 »