Sloppy stats shame science.
Scientific and medical journals are not the sort of places many mistakes are to be expected. Yet Emili García-Berthou and Carles Alcaraz, researchers at the University of Girona in Spain, have found that 38 percent of a sample of papers in "Nature," and a quarter of those sampled in the "British Med...
| Publicado en: | Economist Vol. 371; no. 8378; pp. 74 - 76 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Economist Newspaper Limited
6/5/2004
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=13323340&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 13323340 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00130613 ECO jtl: Economist issn: 00130613 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 6/5/2004 vid: 371 iid: 8378 pid: 161 pub: Economist Newspaper Limited artinfo: ui: 13323340 ppf: 74 ppct: 2 formats: tig: atl: Sloppy stats shame science. aug: su: Scientific communication Error analysis in mathematics Quantitative research Periodicals Statistics Measurement errors Errors Medical research Publishing Research sug: subj: Scientific communication Error analysis in mathematics Quantitative research Periodicals Statistics Measurement errors Errors Medical research Publishing Research ab: Scientific and medical journals are not the sort of places many mistakes are to be expected. Yet Emili García-Berthou and Carles Alcaraz, researchers at the University of Girona in Spain, have found that 38 percent of a sample of papers in "Nature," and a quarter of those sampled in the "British Medical Journal"--two of the world's most respected journals--contained one or more statistical errors. Not all of these errors led to erroneous conclusions, but the authors of the study reckon that four percent of the errors may have caused non-significant findings to be misrepresented as being significant. Of course, mistakes happen in the best-run organisations, and there is no suggestion that any of the errors observed was a deliberate fraud. But there do seem to have been rather a lot of them. One solution might be for researchers to publish raw data as well as statistical analysis and conclusions. The real answer, however, surely lies with the researchers themselves. pubtype: Periodical doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2004 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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