A new study from Dr. Kaltiala in Finland is being used to claim that trans care is not lifesaving. Experts say this is false, and the study itself shows trans care likely saves lives.
Consult a statistician. … has anybody ever done this?
Definitely not in academia. Agreed that academic papers are regularly published by people who know nothing about statistics, but threw some numbers from 3 trails into some package told them without any understanding of what they’re doing other than “p-value below certain thresholds, so I put *, **, or *** in a column”. And I doubt journals make sure to get someone with a statistics background to double check things for the basic sciences.
I’d just expect better in the medical field where statistics are much more essential and the results are much more applied in a way that directly has a large impact on the QoL of people.
Agreed there’s no unbiased researchers. But you can be biased and still not make obvious exclusions to fit your story. And if they want their story to be “psychiatric care causes suicide,” they should bury their central claim deep in the paper. It should be explicit about that claim in the title or at least the abstract.
Definitely not in academia. Agreed that academic papers are regularly published by people who know nothing about statistics, but threw some numbers from 3 trails into some package told them without any understanding of what they’re doing other than “p-value below certain thresholds, so I put *, **, or *** in a column”. And I doubt journals make sure to get someone with a statistics background to double check things for the basic sciences.
I’d just expect better in the medical field where statistics are much more essential and the results are much more applied in a way that directly has a large impact on the QoL of people.
Agreed there’s no unbiased researchers. But you can be biased and still not make obvious exclusions to fit your story. And if they want their story to be “psychiatric care causes suicide,” they should bury their central claim deep in the paper. It should be explicit about that claim in the title or at least the abstract.