- selecting from CH's article, and re-formatting. I don't know if
I am agreeing, disagreeing, or just rambling on.
On 4 May 2001 10:15:23 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Carl Huberty)
wrote:
CH: " Why do articles appear in print when study methods, analyses,
results, and conclusions are somewhat faulty?"
- I suspect it might be a consequence of "Sturgeon's Law,"
named after the science fiction author. "Ninety percent of
everything is crap." Why do they appear in print when they
are GROSSLY faulty? Yesterday's NY Times carried a
report on how the WORST schools have improved
more than the schools that were only BAD. That was much-
discussed, if not published. - One critique was, the
absence of peer review. There are comments from statisticians
in the NY Times article; they criticize, but (I thought) they
don't "get it" on the simplest point.
The article, while expressing skepticism by numerous
people, never mentions "REGRESSION TOWARD the MEAN"
which did seem (to me) to account for every single claim of the
original authors whose writing caused the article.
CH: " [....] My first, and perhaps overly critical, response is that
the editorial practices are faulty....[ ... ] I can think of two
reasons: 1) journal editors can not or do not send manuscripts to
reviewers with statistical analysis expertise; and 2) manuscript
originators do not regularly seek methodologists as co-authors.
Which is more prevalent?"
APA Journals have started trying for both, I think. But I think
that "statistics" only scratches the surface. A lot of what arises
are issues of design. And then there are issues of "data analysis".
Becoming a statistician helped me understand those so that I could
articulate them for other people; but a lot of what I know was never
important in any courses. I remember taking just one course or
epidemiology, where we students were responsible for reading and
interpreting some published report, for the edification of the whole
class -- I thought I did mine pretty well, but the rest of the class
really did stagger through the exercise.
Is this "critical reading" something that can be learned, and
improved?
--
Rich Ulrich, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html
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