Median Watch

Eyes on statistics

Casual inference and pubic health – What a rise in common spelling errors says about the state of research culture

Reproduced from the LSE impact blog. Here’s their introduction: Based on an analysis of over 32 million abstracts published over the last fifty years, Adrian Barnett and Nicole White find a marked rise in common spelling errors. Evidence they suggest of a culture of quantity over quality in academic writing. Pressure Many academics feel pressure to publish lots of papers every year because demonstrating their productivity is key for securing jobs and promotions.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Randomisation can resolve the uncertainty at the heart of peer review

Reproduced from the LSE impact blog. Here’s their introduction: Peer review decisions are definitive, and depending on the style of peer review practiced at a journal, reviewers can usually make one of three recommendations: accept, reject, revise and resubmit. Discussing a new study into the levels of certainty reviewers have making these choices, Adrian Barnett suggests how embracing this doubt could improve peer review processes. Easy peer review Occasionally I find peer review easy.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Saturday, October 26, 2024

I got my first real job because I could play football

I say real job, because I’d been working whilst studying as a dishwasher, packer, waiter, bingo operator, book-binder, and in a bookies. The interviews for these jobs were straightforward, turning up on time and in the right place got you half way there. My first real interview – way back in 1994 – was for a graduate statistician position at a big drug company in the UK. They paid my train ticket, put me up in a hotel, and took all the candidates out for dinner.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Thursday, September 5, 2024

Publishing "negative" results

We’ve just published the world’s first randomised trial of funding (paper available here). We ran a truly novel study, using a gold standard study design, and with a published protocol. So why did it take two years to get through peer review? Too much care Our team also recently published a large randomised trial about reducing unnecessary care at the end of life (paper available here). A completely different area to funding, but again an important research question, with a strong study design, and a peer reviewed protocol.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Monday, August 12, 2024

Checking BibTeX files against the Retraction Watch database

Last week I saw Alison Avenell give a great talk titled “Improving the integrity of published research: How, when, and if?’’ This was on her experience of finding fraudulent papers and what actions the journals took to correct the record – which was too often nothing. One of Alison’s recommendations was to avoid inadvertently citing retracted papers by checking against the wonderful Retraction Watch database. For those using reference management software such as Zotero this is already done for you.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Tuesday, March 12, 2024