The American Statistical Association is seeking nominations for its annual Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award. The award was created in 2004 to encourage and recognize members of the communications media who have best displayed an informed interest in the science of statistics and its role in public life. The award can be given for a single statistical article or for a body of work.
Former winners of the award include: Felix Salmon, financial blogger, 2010; Sharon Begley, Newsweek, 2009; Mark Buchanan, New York Times, 2008; John Berry, Bloomberg News, 2005; and Gina Kolata, New York Times, 2004.
If anyone has any suggestions for the 2012 award, feel free to post in the comments or email me.
Ezra Klein and Dylan Matthews for Research Desk on Ezra’s blog:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/2011/02/25/ABjfuEJ_category.html?blogId=ezra-klein&tag=Research%20Desk
I think the idea is Ezra’s, the execution Dylans – frequently with careful reference to scholarly papers, at times also with good graphs.
I think the obvious choice is Gregg Easterbrook, given the evidence you’ve compiled in his favor.
Really, Sharon Begley?
Tggp:
I followed your links but I think the blogger’s dispute should really be with the authors of the cited research article, not with Begley, who seemed to be quoting accurately from the paper she was discussing.
Without looking at the paper in great detail, I do think that maybe they made a statistical error in the interpretation of intermediate outcomes. If women and men are indeed different in trait X, and then trait X predicts trait Y, it’s misleading to think that X has explained away some of the differences in sex. It would be more accurate to say that X is embodying some of the differences. So the blogger you link to (Matthew Hutson) might very well be correct in being upset at how the results are summarized. But I don’t know how much you can blame Begley for this: I think she did a reasonable (if not perfect) job of summarizing the research article. You’d have to criticize her for not being skeptical enough—that’s fine, but I’d hardly call it deliberate misrepresentation.
There’s the issue of explaining vs explaining away, and then there’s the issue of whether there’s a difference controlling for a factor. Begley reported the paper as saying there was “no difference”, which is basically the opposite of what it actually said. A fearful/dismissive attachment style amplifies pre-existing differences, so restricting a sample to just such styles would result in quite large differences. I found an available version of their paper here, which does not contain the quote “what looks like a gender difference is in fact an attachment effect”. That is a terrible summary, and so I suppose I should fault them for that (I don’t know if that’s from another version of the paper that google hasn’t turned up or personal communication). The paper I read only claims that attachment effects help to explain both within and between gender difference rather than fully doing so, and in the text they make clear the gender and attachment effects are unique, independent and interactive. In relation to Buss’ work (also mentioned by Begley), they claim to be adding nuance and complexity rather than anything like a refutation or replacement.
The initial misreading we can blame the researchers for with such a summary (along with Begley if there is an expectation that journalists read any of the research rather than just that summary). But failing to correct it after it’s pointed out that the paper says the opposite, claiming an inability to understand not-at-all complicated statistics like that graph, is even worse. That’s the bit that sounds willful to me. But maybe I don’t understand the practice of science journalism.
There’s that million-apples-hitting Newton piece.
Nate Silver hasn’t won this yet? He seems like the ideal candidate to me…
I second that!
David Leonhardt?
Annie Baxter, MPR (Minnesota Public Radio). She deals with salient and controversial topics (job market, unemployment, housing market, manufacturing), but always presents a thorough, accurate and balanced analysis grounded in statistics. She comprehends the power and challenges of using statistics in reporting, and she persistently digs for a nuanced analysis to giver her listeners an accurate sense of trends and their impact. Some of her stories have gone regional or national.
This is an award for excellence in statistical reporting by the American Statistical Association. Is there any residency or citizenship requirement, e.g. North Americans only? If all are eligible, I would suggest Olaf Storbeck. He’s based in London, reports for Handelsblatt, and most of his material (that I’ve read) is in English. He’s more of an economics-light or finance journalist, than a statistical journalist. But he uses statistical analysis to support his reporting, and he soldiers through the work himself.
My other suggestion is Scotty Barber of Reuters.
* Felix won the prize in 2010??? I thought he had disliked and disdained statisticians and quantitative analysis…