Sobre ajuda em curso de Bioestatistica : Comment in Nature on discipline

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: William Stanbury <williamstanbury@gmail.com>
Date: 2013/1/4
Subject: Re: Comment in Nature on discipline of statistics (Vaux 13 Dec 2012)
To: allstat@jiscmail.ac.uk

Interesting, going back 10-20 years ago, and perhaps still now, meta-analyses were very popular in some biological fields, particularly admired as being sound statistically by e.g. German biostatisticians plus MD/Ph.Ds.

On 4 January 2013 13:15, Andy Cooper <andy_cooper83@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

I read the article by David Vaux yesterday, and being a biostatistician, I could not agree more with his views. Although his comments refered mainly to small sample size studies, large sample size studies are even more problematic due to other statistically trickier issues such as batch effects and confounding factors. Frankly, the whole field is an absolute mess and it is not suprising to me hat so much of modern biology is irreproducible, and therefore it is questionable if such research represents genuine science. I am more inclined to think that it is a waste of money since a lot of published "results" are wrong, or are overinterpreted, eventually misleading other scientists. The problem is not only that biologists don't have the statistical background, but more often than not, they just don't have the aptitude to learn (I recall from my school days that those doing biology were, generally speaking, rather poor at Maths and Physics, and even hated these subjects...). Most worryingly, biologists sometimes don't even listen to the statisticians (without sounding paranoid here, but I have detected apathy, fear and prejudice in biologists when confronted by statisticians). Finally, budgetary restrictions, and the pressures of grant funding means that biologists often knowingly turn a blind eye to statistically fragile results or simply abuse what seem to be positive but statistically insignificant results. As long as they get their paper into Nature, that is all that matters to them, and determining whether the result underpinning their work is statistically sound or not is not of their main concern. Sad but true.

From: William Stanbury <williamstanbury@GMAIL.COM>
To: allstat@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Sent: Friday, 4 January 2013, 1:12

Subject: Re: Comment in Nature on discipline of statistics (Vaux 13 Dec 2012)

Interesting situ: Vaux is a francophone name, do you know his University and possibly nationality or background? As a native speaker having worked several years with francophone Belgian statisticians, I understand the issues here. Thanks.

On 3 January 2013 12:24, Allan Reese (Cefas) <allan.reese@cefas.co.uk> wrote:

Nature (Vol 492 p180) contains a personal comment article by a professor of cell biology. He condemns reporting of “P values for single `representative’ experiments. ... Because science represents the knowledge gained from repeated observations or experiments, these have to be performed more than once – or must use multiple independent samples – for us to have confidence that the results are not just a fluke, a coincidence or a mistake.”

There are follow-up comments at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v492/n7428/full/492180a.html that appear to come from other scientists, not statisticians.

I have sympathy with Vaux’s views but think they are badly expressed and muddled as a critique of the way statistics is used in science. One specific point is that he confuses the statistical analysis with the reporting (“I see figures with error bars that do not say what they describe.”) I have personally exchanged emails with Nature on the subject of poorly designed graphs, and was put off on the basis that they had a comment article in press. Hence I don’t want to continue an individual campaign against the magazine, but maybe Allstat members would be interested to read Vaux’s article and respond. Maybe editors should ask a qualified statistician to referee statistics.

Just to rattle your cage, “[Experimental biologists] don’t all need to understand complex statistics, or hire professional statisticians, but there would be fewer sloppy papers if every author, reviewer and editor understood statistical concepts such as standard deviation .... [boxed Glossary] Standard deviation: The typical difference between each value and the mean value.”

Allan Reese
(personal view, not on behalf of Cefas)

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Basilio de Bragança Pereira ,DIC and PhD(Imperial College), DL(COPPE)
*UFRJ-Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
*Titular Professor of Bioestatistics and of Applied Statistics
*FM-School of Medicine and COPPE-Posgraduate School of Engineering and
HUCFF-University Hospital Clementino Fraga Filho.

*MailAddress:
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Sobre ajuda em curso de Bioestatistica : Comment in Nature on discipline of statistics (Vaux 13 Dec 2012)