Median Watch

Eyes on statistics

Ethics transparency

Why aren’t ethics applications publicly available? If not the full application, then at least the investigators' names, the title, a plain language summary, the application number, and the date it was approved. A public record would help confirm that the research actually took place. We live in a world where entire papers can be written in under 30 minutes. Many thousands of researchers are using this new technology to boost their CVs with meaningless papers.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Thursday, June 11, 2026

Australia does not want to share health data

I am a statistician. I rely on data for my career. Luckily data is everywhere, so I’m often spoilt for choice. One place where I no longer look for existing data is the health and medical system in Australia. This comes from multiple painful experiences of spending months on approval processes that end in failure. Ad nauseum examples Many other researchers have spoken about the difficulties of accessing health data for research in Australia.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Friday, October 7, 2022

A possibly enormous change to health and medical research

Re-posted from Campus Morning Mail with permission. The National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research is a vitally important document for researchers and the public, because it determines what research is acceptable and guides how researchers should design studies to adhere to ethical practice. There is a current public consultation on changes to the statement. One proposed change is that this sentence: “Research may lead to harms, discomforts and/or inconveniences for participants and/or others.

Posted by Adrian Barnett Monday, July 11, 2022