Median Watch

Eyes on statistics

University league tables cost money and cause harm

Re-posted from Campus Morning Mail with permission. Last week I pledged to work for any Australian university for free if they abandoned league tables. So far no university has been bold enough to take up my offer. I am one of many academics who have criticised league tables using science, demonstrating their many statistical flaws and negative consequences. But all this scientific criticism has had no impact. Instead, the number of league tables is growing and so is their influence.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Friday, November 19, 2021

Funding schemes that cost as much as they reward

Johnson & Johnson have a funding scheme for women in STEM. Of course this is a great idea and much needed given the chronic under-representation of women in health and medical research, which was confirmed again this week with the latest NHMRC figures. But there’s a huge potential problem with this scheme: the success rate is under 1%. The last round had 650 applications and 6 awarded. Given this incredibly low success rate, this scheme could be costing as much as it rewards.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Thursday, September 16, 2021

A year without p-values

One year ago after another stupid fight with a journal about p-values, I made a pledge to go without them for a year. Here’s how it went. But first, why? I am aware of the arguments for and against p-values. I have used p-values for a long while and they can be a useful statistic. The reason I ditched them is because almost nobody in health and medical research interprets them correctly, wrongly thinking they reveal the probability that the null hypothesis is true (other misinterpretations are available).

Posted by Adrian Barnett Friday, September 10, 2021

Finding racist users in an online football game

In 1998, the French men’s team won the football World Cup for the first time in their history. For most of the country, even non-football fans, it was a joyous moment and the trigger for a massive national party, especially as the tournament was in France with the final in Paris. At least one Frenchman did not join the party: the rancorous politician Jean Marie Le Pen, who complained that the team was not “French enough”, a cowardly reference to the number of black players in the team.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Friday, June 11, 2021

An apology to the public

Sorry state. A few years ago I thought about writing an article that apologised to the public about the poor state of health and medical research. Their tax pays for this research and they give their time and data, and yet far too often the final results are totally unreliable. In the end I bottled it; too worried about the potential harm to my career. But today I’ve read this important paper from a group of statistical colleagues and it’s given me the nerve to apologise.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Tuesday, June 1, 2021