“I was left with an overwhelming feeling that the World Values Survey is simply a vehicle for telling stories about values . . .”

Dale Lehman writes: My guess is that you are familiar with the World Values Survey – I was not until I saw it described in the Economist this week (August 12, 2023). It has probably been used in the careers … Continue reading

Their signal-to-noise ratio was low, so they decided to do a specification search, use a one-tailed test, and go with a p-value of 0.1.

Adam Zelizer writes: I saw your post about the underpowered COVID survey experiment on the blog and wondered if you’ve seen this paper, “Counter-stereotypical Messaging and Partisan Cues: Moving the Needle on Vaccines in a Polarized U.S.” It is written … Continue reading

On a really bad paper on birth month and autism (and why there’s value in taking a look at a clear case of bad research, even if it’s obscure and from many years ago)

In an otherwise unrelated thread on Brutus vs. Mo Willems, an anonymous commenter wrote: Researchers found that the risk of autism in twins depended on the month they were born in, with January being 80% riskier than December. The link … Continue reading

An epidemiologist and a psychologist come down from the ivory tower to lecture us on “concrete values like freedom and equality” . . . What does that even mean?? The challenge of criticizing policies without considering their political and social contexts:

Flavio Bartmann writes: I don’t know if you have seen this, the latest from John Ioannidis (together with Michaela Schippers this time), Saving Democracy From the Pandemic, an article at Tablet magazine. In spite of its grandiose title, it is … Continue reading

Bad stuff going down in biostat-land: Declaring null effect just cos p-value is more than 0.05, assuming proportional hazards where it makes no sense

Wesley Tansey writes: This is no doubt something we both can agree is a sad and wrongheaded use of statistics, namely incredible reliance on null hypothesis significance testing. Here’s an example: Phase III trial. Failed because their primary endpoint had … Continue reading

This blog is like a Masterclass except the production values are close to zero, it’s free, and we don’t claim that reading it will make you better at anything.

“From a biochemical perspective, wakefulness is low-level brain damage” So, I picked up this week’s New Yorker and saw an article on an online “edutainment” platform called Masterclass. Masterclass . . . that rang a bell . . . I … Continue reading

When confidence intervals include unreasonable values . . . When confidence intervals include only unreasonable values . . .

Robert Kaestner writes: Economists’ love affair with randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is growing stronger by the day. But what should we make of an RCT that produces a point estimate and confidence interval that largely includes values that most would … Continue reading