Does it mean scientists are committing misconduct, or trying to? The survey helps explain why so many results in biomedical research can’t be reproduced, said Steven Goodman, a professor of medicine and policy at Stanford University, and co-author of an editorial piece that ran with the survey results in the Annals of Internal Medicine. But the results did show that many medical researchers are open about such transgressions, despite being antithetical to the progress of science, and likely to contribute to misleading medical information. The statisticians didn’t have to say whether they accepted any of these requests. Ignoring violations of assumptions that would change results from positive to negative.Not reporting the presence of key missing data that might bias the results.Interpreting the statistical findings on the basis of expectation, rather than actual results.Removing or altering some data records to better support the research hypothesis.The epidemiologist decided to investigate whether this sort of thing was widespread.įour particularly popular types of inappropriate requests were reported by at least 20 percent of the 390 statisticians who responded to the survey: ![]() The survey was created by an epidemiologist at NYU, who, according to a story in the CBC, was shocked when a statistician told him of frequent requests to help cook the books. ![]() When statisticians responded to a survey about the kinds of requests they received from biomedical scientists, a number of them reported “inappropriate requests” like throwing out or ignoring inconvenient data points and otherwise finding ways to make things look like the scientist got a desired result, rather than the truth. (Bloomberg Opinion) - You won't believe the things scientists ask statisticians to do.
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