Median Watch

Eyes on statistics

Painting a picture of research fraud

Originally published in the Deeble and AusHSI newsletter. Vincent van Gogh only sold a few paintings during his lifetime and died a poor man. After he died, his sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, cleverly built his reputation and created a thriving market for his paintings. Recent sales have been over USD $80 million. Vincent was both truly gifted and desperately unlucky. Soon after his paintings started to sell, van Gogh was the victim of fraud.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Aggravating acronyms (AA)

My eleven year-old uses lots of words that go over my head, such as “skibidi”, “bruh” and “floptropica”. I’m not meant to understand their conversations and that’s rad. I also struggle to understand many scientific papers. Sometimes it’s my fault, as I’m too tired or too dumb. But sometimes it’s the authors’ fault, as they’ve drowned their ideas in verbiage and acronyms. We wrote a fun paper showing that scientific papers are using more acronyms.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Monday, February 10, 2025

Funding schemes that cost more than they award: part 2

“What is the purpose of research funding?” Phew, that is a big question. If I could hear your answers, I am sure there would be a wide range of opinions. Let’s put that in the too hard basket. What about this question, “What should research funding not do?" Again, I can imagine lots of answers, but there are likely some answers that we could all agree on. How about an axiom that “A research funding scheme should never cost more than it awards.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Wednesday, February 5, 2025

90% of scientific research is crap

Reading Adrian Edmondson’s excellent autobiography, he mentioned Sturgeon’s law which is: “Ninety percent of everything is crap”. Adrian is a comedian and was applying the law to his creative work. Sturgeon was using it talk about science fiction, but I think it also applies to scientific research, and Sturgeon’s number is strikingly similar to the estimate from Chalmers and Glasziou that 87.5% of health and medical research is wasted (which they rounded down to 85%).

Posted by Adrian Barnett Tuesday, January 7, 2025

A publication’s “what” should count more than it’s “where”: why we should waive journal titles

Reproduced from the DORA blog. The winter months can get cold in Belfast, the largest city in Northern Ireland where the Titanic was designed, built and launched in the early 1900s. Not seriously cold of course, never sub-zero depths of cold that were the undoing of the Titanic on its maiden voyage, but a ‘nippy’ cold… a cold that comes with biting winds and rain that means only the bravest of souls venture outside in the winter months without the insurance policy of a good coat.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Wednesday, November 13, 2024