Group items tagged

Another example of news coverage over-stating the causal relationship between two things that research has demonstrated have some *association*. Good discussion of the particular headlines.

Discusses a recent paper and press-release (a short summary circulated to the media by the people involved. In research, this is generally a summary of the paper often published by the university or organisation that has conducted the research). Do you think starting to eat nuts is likely to decrease your risk of heart disease? What other behaviours or characteristics do you think nut-eating might be associated with? Would any of them also be related to health factors?

"we pushed back against a misleading news release from Yale University that ran with the headline, "Yale researchers discover underlying cause of myeloma." The release claimed that the researchers identified "what causes a third of all myelomas," describing a faulty immune system response to compounds known as lysolipids as the culprit. But that characterization was wrong. First off, the research only demonstrated an association between lysolipids and this cancer - they didn't prove that one caused the other. And far from applying to a third of myeloma patients, the findings applied only to a tiny group of patients "

'Significance' is a magazine published by the UK Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical Association. E.g. this article discusses the data we might use to analyse food security, thinking about what sources of data are available and the questions they might help us answer. "data on food insecurity is biased towards the environment in which it was created and the priorities of those who collect or commission it. Data from schools is concerned with reimbursement; government data might be focused on budgetary constraints or accountability; grocery stores could (if willing) tell us what food is bought, but not how it is used; meanwhile, non-profits are most interested in demonstrating impact to funders. There is a wide variety of data sets available, but very few are created with the intent to understand the real drivers of hunger and poverty. The data may be repurposed, but modellers must be especially careful to moderate the assumptions of each data set. ...... It is also especially important that those experiencing hunger and poverty are consulted when designing any data analysis project. The input of domain experts is crucial to the success of data science endeavours, and those experiencing poverty know the right questions to ask."

or those of us who can't stand the thought of creepy crawlies or who jump at the sight of a shadow in the ocean, summer in Australia can be a challenging time. Deadly snakes, sharks and spiders - you name it, we've got it. But just how deadly are these creatures and how disproportionate is our fear of them? To find out we compiled a list of deaths commonly associated with summer.

Podcast from UTS Think:Digital Futures (that I briefly appear on). Sometimes we get caught up thinking data and science are the be all and end all - it can give us a lot of answers sure, but the devil is in the detail. How are we interpreting data wrong? And why do we have trouble communicating it? Presenters/Producers: Cheyne Anderson & Ellen Leabeater Speakers: Jon Wardle - Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney Simon Knight - Lecturer, Connected Intelligence Centre, UTS Mark Moritz - Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University Think: Digital Futures is supported by 2SER and the University of Technology Sydney. http://2ser.com/shows/think-digital-futures/

What do you take from this hypothetical headline: "Reading the Research Digest blog is associated with higher intelligence"? How about this one: "Reading this blog might increase your intelligence"? According to science writing guides like HealthNewsReview.org, taking the first correlational finding from a peer-reviewed article and reporting it for the public using the second wording, implying causation, is a sin of exaggeration, making a relationship appear more causal than the evidence suggests.

"Meditation can leave you feeling even more stressed," the Daily Mail reports. The claim is prompted by a study of 60 practitioners of Buddhist meditation in the US which found they'd had a range of "challenging or difficult" experiences associated with the practice. However, it's not clear how relevant the results are to the majority of people who use meditation apps or take mindfulness classes. This article discusses a great example of bad medical reporting from the daily mail. Note how the numbers stack up (e.g "almost 100" is actually 60 patients)

In this case, because pancreatic cancer is relatively rare, the impressive-sounding 50% reduction doesn't amount to very much. According to the American Cancer Society, a 60-year-old man has a 0.41% (1 in 241) chance of developing pancreatic cancer during the next ten years. (Risk varies greatly with age and is much lower at younger ages.) So cutting that risk in half might bring it down to about 0.2% (1 in 480). It's a 50% drop, sure, but the risk was already very small to begin with. In this case, it's more helpful to news and health care consumers to describe it as a 0.2 percentage point reduction. And then there are the harms of regular aspirin use; the Yale news release that the tweet links to doesn't mention any. But taking aspirin regularly isn't a harmless intervention - far from it. It's well known that taking aspirin every day can cause serious bleeding in the gastrointestinal system and, less frequently, in the brain. That's why guidelines for aspirin use in cardiovascular disease prevention don't recommend it for people at low risk of a heart attack. The potential benefits may be outweighed by the risks of a serious bleed.