Posts from May 2015 (43)

If you’d like to comment on or debate any of this week’s Stat of the Week nominations, please do so below!

This one is originally from the Telegraph, but it’s one where you might expect the local editors to exercise a little caution in reposting it

A test that can predict with 100 per cent accuracy whether someone will develop cancer up to 13 years in the future has been devised by scientists.

It’s very unlikely that the accuracy could be 100%. Even it is was,  it’s very unlikely that the scientists could know it was 100% accurate by the time they first published results.

One doesn’t need to go as far as the open-access research paper to confirm one’s suspicions. The press release from Northwestern University doesn’t have anything like the 100% claim in it; there are no accuracy claims made at all.

If you do go to the research paper, just looking at the pictures helps. In this graph (figure 1), the red dots are people who ended up with a cancer diagnosis; the blue dots are those who didn’t. There’s a difference between the two groups, but nothing like the complete separation you’d see with 100% accuracy.

Reading the Discussion section, where the researchers tend to be at least somewhat honest about limitations of their research

Our study participants were all male and mostly Caucasian, thus studies of females and non-Caucasians are warranted to confirm our findings more broadly. Our sample size limited our ability to analyze specific cancer subtypes other than prostate cancer. Thus, caution should be exercised in interpreting our results as different cancer subtypes have different biological mechanisms, and our low sample size increases the possibility of our findings being due to random chance and/or our measures of association being artificially high.

Often, exaggerated claims in the media can be traced to press releases or to comments by researchers. In this case it’s hard to see the scientists being at fault; it looks as if it’s the Telegraph that has come up with the “100% accuracy” claim and the consequent fears for the future of the insurance industry.

(Thanks to Mark Hanna for pointing this one out on Twitter)

StatsNZ has a discussion forum on the 2018 Census

They say

The discussion on Loomio will be open from 30 Apr to 10 Jun 2015.

Your discussions will be considered as an input to final decision making.

Your best opportunity to influence census content is to make a submission. Statistics NZ will use this 2018 Census content determination framework to make final decisions on content. The formal submission period will be open from 18 May until 30 Jun 2015 via www.stats.govt.nz.

So, if you have views on what should be asked and how it should be asked, join in the discussion and/or make a submission