Posted inFun
Time To Donate!
Time for the semi-annual call to contribute! Do this The best way to ensure the continued existence of this backwater block is to pass on articles that you like, or…
Posted inStatistics
On That Fluoride-IQ Study & Statistical Silliness
I am in the Northwoods at the water's edge, far from the teeming masses, and I only had time to glance through this new study that claims that women who…
Posted inStatistics
That Study Claiming Religious Kids Are Less Altruistic That I Said Stinks Was Retracted
Long-time readers will recall the original criticisms of the paper "The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children's Altruism across the World" by Jean Decety, Jason M. Cowell, Kang Lee, Susan…
Posted inStatistics
Low-Hanging Molecules Have Already Been Picked—Most New Drugs Provide No Benefit
Remember the old stock scam? Call up 1,000 people and tell half Stock A will rise, and tell the other half it will fall. Five hundred people will be slightly…
Posted inStatistics
The Epidemiologist Fallacy Strikes Again — Pesticides & Autism
Long-time readers will recall the epidemiologist fallacy is a shotgun marriage of the ecological fallacy and wee p-values. Make that and/or confidence intervals. For confidence intervals are equivalent to p-values…
Posted inStatistics
Case Study Of How Easy It Is To Go Wrong
We used to talk a lot about the amygdala here: Yet Another Study "Proves" Liberal, Conservative Brain Differences (wee ps, amygdalas), Scientists Suddenly Discover Men Don't Understand Women (wee ps,…
Posted inStatistics
An Infinity of Null Hypotheses — Another Anti-P-Value Argument
This is extracted from this set of papers, which should be read in full. An ordinary regression model is written mu = beta_0x_1 + ... + beta_0x_p, where mu…
Posted inClass Statistics
Example Of Bad Trend Analysis
These examples are from the BAMS article "Continental US Hurricane Landfall Frequency And Associated Damage: Observations and Future Risks" by PhiliP J. Klotzbach, Steven G. Bowen, Roger Pielke JR., and…