algolia.json

[{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1739145600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":300,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1739145600,"objectID":"01d1cc8ce4c40569eb16a230596331df","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/acronyms/","publishdate":"2025-02-10T00:00:00Z","readingtime":1,"relpermalink":"/post/acronyms/","section":"post","summary":"My eleven year-old uses lots of words that go over my head, such as “skibidi”, “bruh” and “floptropica”. I’m not meant to understand their conversations and that’s rad.\nI also struggle to understand many scientific papers. Sometimes it’s my fault, as I’m too tired or too dumb. But sometimes it’s the authors’ fault, as they’ve drowned their ideas in verbiage and acronyms.\nWe wrote a fun paper showing that scientific papers are using more acronyms.","tags":["writing"],"title":"Aggravating acronyms (AA)","type":"post","url":"/post/acronyms/","weight":0,"wordcount":210},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1739145600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"home","lang":"en","lastmod":1739145600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/","section":"","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"Median Watch","type":"page","url":"/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1739145600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"section","lang":"en","lastmod":1739145600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/post/","section":"post","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"Posts","type":"post","url":"/post/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1739145600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"taxonomy","lang":"en","lastmod":1739145600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"Tags","type":"tags","url":"/tags/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1739145600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1739145600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/writing/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/writing/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"writing","type":"tags","url":"/tags/writing/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1738713600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1738713600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/career/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/career/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"career","type":"tags","url":"/tags/career/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1738713600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1738713600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/funding/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/funding/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"funding","type":"tags","url":"/tags/funding/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1738713600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":400,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1738713600,"objectID":"51212e3cdaa8e20af792471b8b707bd9","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/acspri/","publishdate":"2025-02-05T00:00:00Z","readingtime":2,"relpermalink":"/post/acspri/","section":"post","summary":"“What is the purpose of research funding?”\nPhew, that is a big question. If I could hear your answers, I am sure there would be a wide range of opinions.\nLet’s put that in the too hard basket. What about this question, “What should research funding not do?\u0026quot; Again, I can imagine lots of answers, but there are likely some answers that we could all agree on.\nHow about an axiom that “A research funding scheme should never cost more than it awards.","tags":["funding","career"],"title":"Funding schemes that cost more than they award: part 2","type":"post","url":"/post/acspri/","weight":0,"wordcount":301},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1736208000,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":400,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1736208000,"objectID":"d736613de478282284ed05bad2334e3a","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/sturgeon/","publishdate":"2025-01-07T00:00:00Z","readingtime":2,"relpermalink":"/post/sturgeon/","section":"post","summary":"Reading Adrian Edmondson\u0026rsquo;s excellent autobiography, he mentioned Sturgeon\u0026rsquo;s law which is: \u0026ldquo;Ninety percent of everything is crap\u0026rdquo;. Adrian is a comedian and was applying the law to his creative work. Sturgeon was using it talk about science fiction, but I think it also applies to scientific research, and Sturgeon\u0026rsquo;s number is strikingly similar to the estimate from Chalmers and Glasziou that 87.5% of health and medical research is wasted (which they rounded down to 85%).","tags":["career"],"title":"90% of scientific research is crap","type":"post","url":"/post/sturgeon/","weight":0,"wordcount":386},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1731456000,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":900,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1731456000,"objectID":"edcf55162280e53f994e82e0341c92ba","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/what_where/","publishdate":"2024-11-13T00:00:00Z","readingtime":4,"relpermalink":"/post/what_where/","section":"post","summary":"Reproduced from the DORA blog blog.\nThe winter months can get cold in Belfast, the largest city in Northern Ireland where the Titanic was designed, built and launched in the early 1900s.\nNot seriously cold of course, never sub-zero depths of cold that were the undoing of the Titanic on its maiden voyage, but a ‘nippy’ cold… a cold that comes with biting winds and rain that means only the bravest of souls venture outside in the winter months without the insurance policy of a good coat.","tags":["journals","peer review"],"title":"A publication’s “what” should count more than it’s “where”: why we should waive journal titles","type":"post","url":"/post/what_where/","weight":0,"wordcount":852},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1731456000,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1731456000,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/journals/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/journals/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"journals","type":"tags","url":"/tags/journals/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1731456000,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1731456000,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/peer-review/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/peer-review/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"peer review","type":"tags","url":"/tags/peer-review/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1730246400,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":800,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1730246400,"objectID":"a9b875c3123ae550fd91b563ab5f1231","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/spelling_errors/","publishdate":"2024-10-30T00:00:00Z","readingtime":4,"relpermalink":"/post/spelling_errors/","section":"post","summary":"Reproduced from the LSE impact blog. Here\u0026rsquo;s their introduction:\nBased on an analysis of over 32 million abstracts published over the last fifty years, Adrian Barnett and Nicole White find a marked rise in common spelling errors. Evidence they suggest of a culture of quantity over quality in academic writing.\nPressure Many academics feel pressure to publish lots of papers every year because demonstrating their productivity is key for securing jobs and promotions.","tags":["journals"],"title":"Casual inference and pubic health – What a rise in common spelling errors says about the state of research culture","type":"post","url":"/post/spelling_errors/","weight":0,"wordcount":768},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1729900800,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":900,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1729900800,"objectID":"a37fce4fe5b4ce833716f27cf4ed98e9","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/random_review/","publishdate":"2024-10-26T00:00:00Z","readingtime":4,"relpermalink":"/post/random_review/","section":"post","summary":"Reproduced from the LSE impact blog. Here\u0026rsquo;s their introduction:\nPeer review decisions are definitive, and depending on the style of peer review practiced at a journal, reviewers can usually make one of three recommendations: accept, reject, revise and resubmit. Discussing a new study into the levels of certainty reviewers have making these choices, Adrian Barnett suggests how embracing this doubt could improve peer review processes.\nEasy peer review Occasionally I find peer review easy.","tags":["journals","peer review"],"title":"Randomisation can resolve the uncertainty at the heart of peer review","type":"post","url":"/post/random_review/","weight":0,"wordcount":830},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1725494400,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1725494400,"objectID":"58ce7ae4706acfe4bcdfc2a8b3a4ef38","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/football/","publishdate":"2024-09-05T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/football/","section":"post","summary":"I say real job, because I’d been working whilst studying as a dishwasher, packer, waiter, bingo operator, book-binder, and in a bookies. The interviews for these jobs were straightforward, turning up on time and in the right place got you half way there.\nMy first real interview \u0026ndash; way back in 1994 \u0026ndash; was for a graduate statistician position at a big drug company in the UK. They paid my train ticket, put me up in a hotel, and took all the candidates out for dinner.","tags":["career"],"title":"I got my first real job because I could play football","type":"post","url":"/post/football/","weight":0,"wordcount":441},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1723420800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1723420800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/p-values/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/p-values/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"p-values","type":"tags","url":"/tags/p-values/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1723420800,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1723420800,"objectID":"472d0ef5e500db705694ac6d6c8c17a7","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/negative_results/","publishdate":"2024-08-12T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/negative_results/","section":"post","summary":"We\u0026rsquo;ve just published the world\u0026rsquo;s first randomised trial of funding (paper available here). We ran a truly novel study, using a gold standard study design, and with a published protocol. So why did it take two years to get through peer review?\nToo much care Our team also recently published a large randomised trial about reducing unnecessary care at the end of life (paper available here).\nA completely different area to funding, but again an important research question, with a strong study design, and a peer reviewed protocol.","tags":["p-values","journals"],"title":"Publishing \"negative\" results","type":"post","url":"/post/negative_results/","weight":0,"wordcount":448},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1710201600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":200,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1710201600,"objectID":"3f4fc1c5c1b8d4d529feaad8ec58a928","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/retraction_watch/","publishdate":"2024-03-12T00:00:00Z","readingtime":1,"relpermalink":"/post/retraction_watch/","section":"post","summary":"Last week I saw Alison Avenell give a great talk titled \u0026ldquo;Improving the integrity of published research: How, when, and if?’’ This was on her experience of finding fraudulent papers and what actions the journals took to correct the record \u0026ndash; which was too often nothing.\nOne of Alison\u0026rsquo;s recommendations was to avoid inadvertently citing retracted papers by checking against the wonderful Retraction Watch database. For those using reference management software such as Zotero this is already done for you.","tags":["retractions","integrity"],"title":"Checking BibTeX files against the Retraction Watch database","type":"post","url":"/post/retraction_watch/","weight":0,"wordcount":158},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1710201600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1710201600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/integrity/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/integrity/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"integrity","type":"tags","url":"/tags/integrity/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1710201600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1710201600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/retractions/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/retractions/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"retractions","type":"tags","url":"/tags/retractions/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1707955200,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":900,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1707955200,"objectID":"2e4238818dbd0f0dd17d1696882b520a","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/pie_charts/","publishdate":"2024-02-15T00:00:00Z","readingtime":4,"relpermalink":"/post/pie_charts/","section":"post","summary":"Reproduced from The Conversation\nOur lives are becoming increasingly data driven. Our phones monitor our time and internet usage and online surveys discern our opinions and likes. These data harvests are used for telling us how well we’ve slept or what we might like to buy.\nNumbers are becoming more important for everyday life, yet people’s numerical skills are falling behind. For example, the percentage of Year 12 schoolchildren in Australia taking higher and intermediate mathematics has been declining for decades.","tags":["statistics"],"title":"Here’s why you should (almost) never use a pie chart for your data","type":"post","url":"/post/pie_charts/","weight":0,"wordcount":800},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1707955200,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1707955200,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/statistics/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/statistics/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"statistics","type":"tags","url":"/tags/statistics/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1697155200,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1697155200,"objectID":"05416d34f46baa1e55179362a6f018f1","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/aimos/","publishdate":"2023-10-13T00:00:00Z","readingtime":2,"relpermalink":"/post/aimos/","section":"post","summary":"A cover of Science from 2018 (available here) shows two giant scientists peering down on other scientists at work. It is a great image to describe metascience, also known as meta-research or the \u0026ldquo;science of science\u0026rdquo;. This is the growing field of scientifically studying science, with the aim of understanding why it sometimes fails and how we can make it better.\nAt AIMOS (Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-Research and Open Science) we are the giant scientists peering down on our colleagues.","tags":["career"],"title":"What is the AIMOS conference?","type":"post","url":"/post/aimos/","weight":0,"wordcount":426},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1691971200,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1691971200,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/authorship/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/authorship/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"authorship","type":"tags","url":"/tags/authorship/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1691971200,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":300,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1691971200,"objectID":"0e4c0bc3462ff850942a287c8c699ef7","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/hollywood/","publishdate":"2023-08-14T00:00:00Z","readingtime":2,"relpermalink":"/post/hollywood/","section":"post","summary":"As a teenager I watched a lot of films starring Paul Newman and Steve McQueen and loved them all. As an adult I was disappointed to learn they had petty fights about whose name appeared first in the posters.\nTwo big egos fighting about prestige will be familiar to many in academia. Academia presents itself as an intellectual pursuit, but off-stage there are always squabbles about who deserves the biggest slice of the prestige pie.","tags":["prestige","authorship"],"title":"Lights, camera, authorship","type":"post","url":"/post/hollywood/","weight":0,"wordcount":291},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1691971200,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1691971200,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/prestige/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/prestige/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"prestige","type":"tags","url":"/tags/prestige/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":"","date":1689638400,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":300,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1689638400,"objectID":"1c2285c20481d5310e0a417f740d9379","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/statically_significant/","publishdate":"2023-07-18T00:00:00Z","readingtime":2,"relpermalink":"/post/statically_significant/","section":"post","summary":"A colleague sent me a draft manuscript with the typo \u0026ldquo;statically significant\u0026rdquo;. A typo that passes a spell check but would surely not pass reviewers and editors?\nOh dear, a PubMed search reveals that it has snuck past reviewers and editors, many many times. There are 975 abstracts that have used this nonsense phrase. There should be a celebration for the 1000th paper!\n{width=80%,height=80%}\nSurely that\u0026rsquo;s only in the terrible journals though?","tags":["statistics","p-values"],"title":"Statically significant","type":"post","url":"/post/statically_significant/","weight":0,"wordcount":220},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1687478400,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1687478400,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/fraud/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/fraud/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"fraud","type":"tags","url":"/tags/fraud/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1687478400,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":900,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1687478400,"objectID":"a0ac33c41e8e36d05eb25aa77514c15c","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/research_fraud/","publishdate":"2023-06-23T00:00:00Z","readingtime":4,"relpermalink":"/post/research_fraud/","section":"post","summary":"Reposted from The Conversation.\nFraud in science is alarmingly common. Sometimes researchers lie about results and invent data to win funding and prestige. Other times, researchers might pay to stage and publish entirely bogus studies to win an undeserved pay rise – fuelling a “paper mill” industry worth an estimated €1 billion a year.\nSome of this rubbish can be easily spotted by peer reviewers, but the peer review system has become badly stretched by ever-rising paper numbers.","tags":["funding","fraud"],"title":"Scientific fraud is rising, and automated systems won’t stop it. We need research detectives","type":"post","url":"/post/research_fraud/","weight":0,"wordcount":852},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1678060800,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":600,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1678060800,"objectID":"1da85bb2bc6dc466cc5ab15748e8b34a","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/crushing_careers/","publishdate":"2023-03-06T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/crushing_careers/","section":"post","summary":"Reposted with permission from Campus Morning Mail.\nResearchers have a dark sense of humour when it comes to research funding. One of my favourite sneers was from the ecologist Terry McGlynn who said, “instead of writing this grant, I should walk the whole country and get a penny from each person. Same amount of money, but less hassle.”\nApplicants to last year’s early- and mid-career Medical Research Future Fund fellowships may be wishing that they had gone on a long walk rather sitting at their computers, with speculated success rates at under 5 per cent.","tags":["funding","career"],"title":"What to do when applying for research grants is a waste of time for almost everybody","type":"post","url":"/post/crushing_careers/","weight":0,"wordcount":500},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1675123200,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1675123200,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/covid-19/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/covid-19/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"COVID-19","type":"tags","url":"/tags/covid-19/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1675123200,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1675123200,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/league-tables/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/league-tables/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"league tables","type":"tags","url":"/tags/league-tables/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1675123200,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":900,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1675123200,"objectID":"596d5abd0a523c02da1d96ffa313917a","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/no_substance_success/","publishdate":"2023-01-31T00:00:00Z","readingtime":4,"relpermalink":"/post/no_substance_success/","section":"post","summary":"Reposted with permission from 360info.\nNew Zealander Nigel Richards has won the French Scrabble championship twice. What’s more remarkable than double wins is that Nigel doesn’t speak French. He applied his prodigious brain to the task of memorising words from the French dictionary, bypassing the need for understanding.\nIn 2022, The Lancet medical journal achieved a feat that has parallels with Nigel’s Scrabble win. It achieved the highest ‘impact factor’ of any scientific journal in history.","tags":["league tables","covid-19"],"title":"Success without substance","type":"post","url":"/post/no_substance_success/","weight":0,"wordcount":804},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1665100800,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":600,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1665100800,"objectID":"429f8617dc4e1cdaf0ad3e51c6a4d309","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/data_sharing/","publishdate":"2022-10-07T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/data_sharing/","section":"post","summary":"I am a statistician. I rely on data for my career. Luckily data is everywhere, so I\u0026rsquo;m often spoilt for choice.\nOne place where I no longer look for existing data is the health and medical system in Australia. This comes from multiple painful experiences of spending months on approval processes that end in failure.\nAd nauseum examples Many other researchers have spoken about the difficulties of accessing health data for research in Australia.","tags":["ethics","big data"],"title":"Australia does not want to share health data","type":"post","url":"/post/data_sharing/","weight":0,"wordcount":590},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1665100800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1665100800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/big-data/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/big-data/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"big data","type":"tags","url":"/tags/big-data/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1665100800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1665100800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/ethics/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/ethics/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"ethics","type":"tags","url":"/tags/ethics/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1663545600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1663545600,"objectID":"41d23c197ba6312d6f7f59ea9d372fd3","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/z_values/","publishdate":"2022-09-19T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/z_values/","section":"post","summary":"In my talk on bad statistics in medical research, I showed the infamous plot of Z-values created by Erik van Zwet.\nA version of the plot made with David Borg is shown below. The sample size is over 1.1 million Z-values.\n{width=450px}\nThe two large spikes in Z-values are just below and above the statistically significant threshold of ± 1.96, corresponding to a p-value of less than 0.05. The plot looks like a Normal distribution that\u0026rsquo;s caved in.","tags":["p-values","statistics"],"title":"Publication bias or research misconduct?","type":"post","url":"/post/z_values/","weight":0,"wordcount":468},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1657497600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":1000,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1657497600,"objectID":"6a7e1db39f6a32b9d4a2f3c461875441","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/ethics_impact/","publishdate":"2022-07-11T00:00:00Z","readingtime":5,"relpermalink":"/post/ethics_impact/","section":"post","summary":"Re-posted from Campus Morning Mail with permission.\nThe National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research is a vitally important document for researchers and the public, because it determines what research is acceptable and guides how researchers should design studies to adhere to ethical practice. There is a current public consultation on changes to the statement. One proposed change is that this sentence:\n “Research may lead to harms, discomforts and/or inconveniences for participants and/or others.","tags":["ethics"],"title":"A possibly enormous change to health and medical research","type":"post","url":"/post/ethics_impact/","weight":0,"wordcount":917},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1657065600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1657065600,"objectID":"96798cfda99a1bbd3b849a82ce83c5e0","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/science_is_hard/","publishdate":"2022-07-06T00:00:00Z","readingtime":2,"relpermalink":"/post/science_is_hard/","section":"post","summary":"Two weeks ago I gave a fun online talk on statistics for the Young Scientist Forum of the German Society for Biomaterials. I had some great chats with the organisers and there were good questions from the audience.\nOne good question was about how to interpret the analysis results when things are not clear cut. During my presentation I had talked about not deleting difficult outliers and not relying on p-values to give a falsely certain interpretation of what their results mean.","tags":["p-values","statistics"],"title":"Celebrate hard science","type":"post","url":"/post/science_is_hard/","weight":0,"wordcount":410},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1646265600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1646265600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/disaster/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/disaster/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"disaster","type":"tags","url":"/tags/disaster/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1646265600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":600,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1646265600,"objectID":"e92433015c83ada6ff13e0ef13a123d6","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/disaster/","publishdate":"2022-03-03T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/disaster/","section":"post","summary":"Sometimes I fantasise about being in an earthquake. Not a big one, just enough to feel the ground shake, to see the earth move for a few seconds.\nI should be careful what I wish for. Last Sunday I was in the plughole of a proper natural disaster as massive amounts of rain tried to barge its way into our house. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t any fun. Our house is fine, and other friends have had far worse experiences, but it has knocked me about a bit, and it\u0026rsquo;s been hard to focus on work.","tags":["disaster"],"title":"Reflections on experiencing a natural disaster","type":"post","url":"/post/disaster/","weight":0,"wordcount":536},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1637280000,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":800,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1637280000,"objectID":"441ffeaf4f02a7fe9943b222e3f22bf4","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/league_tables/","publishdate":"2021-11-19T00:00:00Z","readingtime":4,"relpermalink":"/post/league_tables/","section":"post","summary":"Re-posted from Campus Morning Mail with permission.\nLast week I pledged to work for any Australian university for free if they abandoned league tables. So far no university has been bold enough to take up my offer.\nI am one of many academics who have criticised league tables using science, demonstrating their many statistical flaws and negative consequences. But all this scientific criticism has had no impact. Instead, the number of league tables is growing and so is their influence.","tags":["league tables"],"title":"University league tables cost money and cause harm","type":"post","url":"/post/league_tables/","weight":0,"wordcount":705},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1631750400,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":600,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1631750400,"objectID":"03b67fcd2993c8f70c385fa9e6f18792","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/hidden_funding_costs/","publishdate":"2021-09-16T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/hidden_funding_costs/","section":"post","summary":"Johnson \u0026amp; Johnson have a funding scheme for women in STEM. Of course this is a great idea and much needed given the chronic under-representation of women in health and medical research, which was confirmed again this week with the latest NHMRC figures.\nBut there\u0026rsquo;s a huge potential problem with this scheme: the success rate is under 1%. The last round had 650 applications and 6 awarded. Given this incredibly low success rate, this scheme could be costing as much as it rewards.","tags":["funding"],"title":"Funding schemes that cost as much as they reward","type":"post","url":"/post/hidden_funding_costs/","weight":0,"wordcount":551},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1631232000,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1631232000,"objectID":"fe42c080e0dcfba157887a2bd01c0353","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/pvalue_year/","publishdate":"2021-09-10T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/pvalue_year/","section":"post","summary":"One year ago after another stupid fight with a journal about p-values, I made a pledge to go without them for a year. Here’s how it went.\nBut first, why? I am aware of the arguments for and against p-values. I have used p-values for a long while and they can be a useful statistic.\nThe reason I ditched them is because almost nobody in health and medical research interprets them correctly, wrongly thinking they reveal the probability that the null hypothesis is true (other misinterpretations are available).","tags":["p-values","statistics"],"title":"A year without p-values","type":"post","url":"/post/pvalue_year/","weight":0,"wordcount":429},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1623369600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":2100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1623369600,"objectID":"cb23a5ccec33e1d5f77683a21b0912ee","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/racism_football/","publishdate":"2021-06-11T00:00:00Z","readingtime":10,"relpermalink":"/post/racism_football/","section":"post","summary":"In 1998, the French men’s team won the football World Cup for the first time in their history. For most of the country, even non-football fans, it was a joyous moment and the trigger for a massive national party, especially as the tournament was in France with the final in Paris.\nAt least one Frenchman did not join the party: the rancorous politician Jean Marie Le Pen, who complained that the team was not “French enough”, a cowardly reference to the number of black players in the team.","tags":["football","racism"],"title":"Finding racist users in an online football game","type":"post","url":"/post/racism_football/","weight":0,"wordcount":2096},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1623369600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1623369600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/football/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/football/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"football","type":"tags","url":"/tags/football/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1623369600,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1623369600,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/racism/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/racism/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"racism","type":"tags","url":"/tags/racism/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":"","date":1622505600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":700,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1622505600,"objectID":"baa781769f301c1988fecf293524f5cb","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/an_apology/","publishdate":"2021-06-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/an_apology/","section":"post","summary":"Sorry state. A few years ago I thought about writing an article that apologised to the public about the poor state of health and medical research. Their tax pays for this research and they give their time and data, and yet far too often the final results are totally unreliable.\nIn the end I bottled it; too worried about the potential harm to my career. But today I\u0026rsquo;ve read this important paper from a group of statistical colleagues and it\u0026rsquo;s given me the nerve to apologise.","tags":["statistics","career"],"title":"An apology to the public","type":"post","url":"/post/an_apology/","weight":0,"wordcount":622},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1614988800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1614988800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/citations/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/citations/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"citations","type":"tags","url":"/tags/citations/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1614988800,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1614988800,"objectID":"c55e5150380b36b79e158788aaa4b789","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/rubbish_citations/","publishdate":"2021-03-06T00:00:00Z","readingtime":2,"relpermalink":"/post/rubbish_citations/","section":"post","summary":"Blog pause It\u0026rsquo;s been a long while between blogs. I won\u0026rsquo;t bore you with how busy I\u0026rsquo;ve been, but one thing that\u0026rsquo;s kept me away from the fun of writing blogs is the \u0026ldquo;fun\u0026rdquo; of writing grants.\nBeans To get more research funding we rightly have to explain the impact of our past funding. It\u0026rsquo;s possible to get examples of impact by seeing how other researchers have cited your work.","tags":["citations","statistics"],"title":"Most citations are rubbish","type":"post","url":"/post/rubbish_citations/","weight":0,"wordcount":401},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1606089600,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1606089600,"objectID":"d1606da4351eae72c96f55141d1025fb","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/c_index/","publishdate":"2020-11-23T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/c_index/","section":"post","summary":"Show me the shortcut Scientists are busy people. Busy people love a short-cut because it gives them more time to be busy.\nThe p-value is a well-used scientific short-cut. It can decide for us whether something is important or not, and it\u0026rsquo;s based on an equation so it must be right.\nAnother heaven-sent shortcut is the h-index which allows us to decide the careers of researchers based on just one number (also made by an equation).","tags":["career"],"title":"I humbly present the novel c-index","type":"post","url":"/post/c_index/","weight":0,"wordcount":444},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1600819200,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1600819200,"objectID":"1389553d5629b8cb79aa9a36db6bbc1b","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/career_disruption/","publishdate":"2020-09-23T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/career_disruption/","section":"post","summary":"Re-posted from this 2016 AusHSI blog because this is still an issue.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s start with the obvious. Winning funding for health and medical research is soul-crushingly hard. Success rates for major schemes are under 20%, so failure is the norm.\nYour application will be judged by a panel of 6 to 12 senior researchers. A key marker of success is your track record, which may simply mean the number and quality of your papers, and your previous research funding (a very circular measure).","tags":["funding","career"],"title":"A change to judging career disruption","type":"post","url":"/post/career_disruption/","weight":0,"wordcount":450},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1599523200,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":700,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1599523200,"objectID":"ac162b01fb8c028956e2ae6ff7fdb2d1","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/pvalue_pledge/","publishdate":"2020-09-08T00:00:00Z","readingtime":4,"relpermalink":"/post/pvalue_pledge/","section":"post","summary":"Yet another p-value run-in. For a recent observational study I tried to limit the use of p-values in the paper. My colleagues wanted more p-values and I had to politely push back. During one team meeting I even offered to put the p-values in if someone could accurately tell me what they meant … silence.\nPredicting that the reviewers would also want to see more p-values, I added this sentence to the paper’s methods: “We have tried to limit the use of p-values, as they are often misunderstood or misinterpreted, and elected to discuss clinically meaningful differences.","tags":["p-values","statistics"],"title":"Dear p-values, it's not me, it's not you, it's everyone else","type":"post","url":"/post/pvalue_pledge/","weight":0,"wordcount":662},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":"","date":1596412800,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":"","excerpt_text":"","expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":900,"html":"","keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1596412800,"objectID":"1d7da8376b81741c417c7908bbb2c9b8","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/not-waving/","publishdate":"2020-08-03T00:00:00Z","readingtime":4,"relpermalink":"/post/not-waving/","section":"post","summary":"Our paper examining trends in acronyms in abstracts was recently published in eLife. We examined over 26 million abstracts from the PubMed database, which is easily the largest data set I’ve ever used. In this post I talk about some of the challenges and benefits of dealing with such a massive data set.\nData greed One of the most common mistakes I see researchers — new and experienced — make is to collect too much data.","tags":["statistics","big data"],"title":"Not waving but drowning in data","type":"post","url":"/post/not-waving/","weight":0,"wordcount":837},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1595462400,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":600,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1595462400,"objectID":"9b35a03c2c59d938d883e70dc1ab28ca","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/goodbye-president/","publishdate":"2020-07-23T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/goodbye-president/","section":"post","summary":"Today I end my two year stint as president of the Statistical Society of Australia. As I press \u0026ldquo;submit\u0026rdquo; on my presidency, here\u0026rsquo;s a hodge-podge of reflections.\nI was delighted to be president, and I will miss being able to say, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m the president of the Stats Society\u0026rdquo;. Statistics has given me an incredible career and I feel I owe something back.\nIt might sound strange to feel a debt to a thing, but statistics is a big thing.","tags":["statistics"],"title":"Goodbye to all that","type":"post","url":"/post/goodbye-president/","weight":0,"wordcount":581},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1594944000,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1594944000,"objectID":"3076f2b2ac1502551a67c7b216988b14","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/quit-research/","publishdate":"2020-07-17T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/quit-research/","section":"post","summary":"Re-posted from the AusHSI blog (8 May 2015).\nAfter yet another failed fellowship application I considered if I should leave research. I now have seven fellowship failures and no successes, and that seems like a lot.\nSuccess rates for grants are nose-diving and even the former head of the NHMRC says that researchers should be considering other careers (pay-walled). I’ve spent a lot of time running research projects for no money, but working for no money is a luxury I can’t afford.","tags":["funding"],"title":"When should I quit research? An evidence-based approach","type":"post","url":"/post/quit-research/","weight":0,"wordcount":492},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1591574400,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":300,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1591574400,"objectID":"d640d951fc8a4f78b65a8353cdbb1e7a","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/did-the-dishes/","publishdate":"2020-06-08T00:00:00Z","readingtime":1,"relpermalink":"/post/did-the-dishes/","section":"post","summary":"My daughter loves a song by Parry Gripp called \u0026ldquo;I did the dishes\u0026rdquo;. The chorus is \u0026ldquo;I did the dishes, I\u0026rsquo;m a hero.\u0026rdquo;\nI can\u0026rsquo;t work out if the song is trying to encourage kids to do the dishes, or if it\u0026rsquo;s making fun of people who think their housework is heroic, or a bit of both.\n\u0026ldquo;Plates, done! Bowls, done! Gravy boat, done!\u0026rdquo;\nI helped some people, I\u0026rsquo;m a hero Here\u0026rsquo;s a screenshot of some my colleagues who I\u0026rsquo;ve helped with their statistics.","tags":["statistics"],"title":"I did the dishes.","type":"post","url":"/post/did-the-dishes/","weight":0,"wordcount":210},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1589932800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1589932800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/academia/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/academia/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"academia","type":"tags","url":"/tags/academia/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1589932800,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":900,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1589932800,"objectID":"9aa7b78bde92873df605c8dc2e95eadf","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/working-weekends-and-late-nights/","publishdate":"2020-05-20T00:00:00Z","readingtime":5,"relpermalink":"/post/working-weekends-and-late-nights/","section":"post","summary":"Re-posted from the March 2020 issue of Advocate.\nThe smell of pool chlorine reminds us of work. Both of us admit to doing emails while sitting at the local pool waiting for the kids to finish their lessons, as well as at cafés, on airplanes, waiting in queues. At least one of us does the odd email or two from the bathroom. We are academics and therefore work anywhere, anytime (maybe most of the time?","tags":["academia"],"title":"Working Weekends and Late Nights","type":"post","url":"/post/working-weekends-and-late-nights/","weight":0,"wordcount":899},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1588118400,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":600,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1588118400,"objectID":"7d4db484a4e5a561b1433d602191d93a","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/research-waste-covid/","publishdate":"2020-04-29T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/research-waste-covid/","section":"post","summary":"Re-posted from Campus Morning Mail.\nPoor quality medical research is nothing new. A major cause is the race to be published first, which means researchers do not adequately check their work.\nThe COVID-19 crisis has put an already pressured system under even more strain, and the cracks are clearly visible.\nSmall studies have been used to justify massive changes in clinical practice, such as the early results on Hydroxychloroquine, which have looked less promising as more work is published.","tags":["statistics","COVID-19"],"title":"The COVID-19 crisis is amplifying shortcomings in health and medical research.","type":"post","url":"/post/research-waste-covid/","weight":0,"wordcount":504},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1586908800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1586908800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/climate-crisis/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/climate-crisis/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"climate crisis","type":"tags","url":"/tags/climate-crisis/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1586908800,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":500,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1586908800,"objectID":"d0d16218ecf3c170e3aaa55685ec1e05","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/climate-crisis/","publishdate":"2020-04-15T00:00:00Z","readingtime":3,"relpermalink":"/post/climate-crisis/","section":"post","summary":"I’ve done a lot of research on seasonal models. I’ve always enjoyed playing with the elegantly simple sinusoid function, which can fit a remarkable array of shapes with just a few parameters. Put enough sinusoids together and you can create any sound. When Fourier discovered this, it was considered too simple to be true.\nA great number of diseases are seasonal, so these models are useful as well as being mathematically pleasing.","tags":["statistics","climate crisis","temperature"],"title":"Playing the scientific record backwards.","type":"post","url":"/post/climate-crisis/","weight":0,"wordcount":483},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1586908800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1586908800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/temperature/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/temperature/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"temperature","type":"tags","url":"/tags/temperature/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1585612800,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":1300,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1585612800,"objectID":"70d948f8251d80cd0b1abc2d7a1f295a","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/covid-uncertainty/","publishdate":"2020-03-31T00:00:00Z","readingtime":6,"relpermalink":"/post/covid-uncertainty/","section":"post","summary":"Yet another COVID model. I did this modelling because I was asked to provide some COVID estimates for a hospital. There have been lots of models in the last few weeks and I don’t want to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio in this vitally important area, but I’m sharing this in case someone finds my approach useful. All the code is here. I have used similar models before to simulate disease numbers over time, for example my PhD student Dimity used microsimulation to examine the long-term effects of climate change (Stephen and Barnett 2017).","tags":["statistics","simulations","COVID-19"],"title":"It's fun to look at the Y A C M (Yet Another COVID Model)","type":"post","url":"/post/covid-uncertainty/","weight":0,"wordcount":1266},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1585612800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1585612800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/simulations/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/simulations/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"simulations","type":"tags","url":"/tags/simulations/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1584403200,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"term","lang":"en","lastmod":1584403200,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/tags/mistakes/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/tags/mistakes/","section":"tags","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"mistakes","type":"tags","url":"/tags/mistakes/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1584403200,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":1000,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1584403200,"objectID":"5d057958ebed12bb03f0937f2fd19744","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/making-mistakes/","publishdate":"2020-03-17T00:00:00Z","readingtime":5,"relpermalink":"/post/making-mistakes/","section":"post","summary":"Statistics can be hard Here’s a great quote about working with statistics from the fantastic statistician David Spiegelhalter: “I am often asked why people tend to find probability a difficult and unintuitive idea, and I reply that, after forty years researching and teaching in this area, I have finally concluded that it is because probability really is a difficult and unintuitive idea” (Spiegelhalter 2019).\nSomeone who attended my one-day statistics refresher course expressed disappointment in their evaluation that after a day’s training they did not now feel like an expert.","tags":["statistics","mistakes"],"title":"Mistakes, I’ve made a few, but then again, not too few to mention","type":"post","url":"/post/making-mistakes/","weight":0,"wordcount":944},{"author":null,"categories":[],"content":null,"date":1583107200,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":1800,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1583107200,"objectID":"c8158611e7a677194216900a74dde5b1","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/funding-gender-disparity/","publishdate":"2020-03-02T00:00:00Z","readingtime":9,"relpermalink":"/post/funding-gender-disparity/","section":"post","summary":"The gender disparity in research funding. There is a large gender disparity in the number of research grants awarded in Australia. For years men have won more funding than women. This disparity in success is driven by a disparity in applications, as women apply far less often. Success rates for men and women are relatively close, so policies to reduce the gender disparity in funding should focus on encouraging more applications from women.","tags":["funding","simulations","career"],"title":"A 2-for-1 deal for female researchers","type":"post","url":"/post/funding-gender-disparity/","weight":0,"wordcount":1730},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":1582848000,"description":"","dir":"post\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":200,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":1582848000,"objectID":"0acb69d0698982edcb2ab27153c87371","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/post/2020-02-28-first-post/","publishdate":"2020-02-28T00:00:00Z","readingtime":1,"relpermalink":"/post/2020-02-28-first-post/","section":"post","summary":"The title for this blog is a homage the ABC TV show \u0026ldquo;Media Watch\u0026rdquo; which critiques the Australian media and is never short of content. Similarly there\u0026rsquo;s a lot wrong in the way people use statistics, so this blog is mainly about the use and misuse of statistics.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve got a post coming on how my research has been misused by those trying to deny the climate crisis. I also want to write about some statistical mistakes I\u0026rsquo;ve made in published papers, which I realise may just help the climate change propagandists to undermine my credibility.","tags":null,"title":"Why start blogging now?","type":"post","url":"/post/2020-02-28-first-post/","weight":0,"wordcount":157},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":-62135596800,"description":"","dir":"search\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":-62135596800,"objectID":"8946788897930c0c0c39fbfcd30ff2e4","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/search/placeholder/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/search/placeholder/","section":"search","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"","type":"search","url":"/search/placeholder/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":-62135596800,"description":"","dir":"top\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":-62135596800,"objectID":"7a0da914bde98a7d3fcc7f6c5886633c","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/top/about/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":1,"relpermalink":"/top/about/","section":"top","summary":"Adrian Barnett\nI am a statistician working at Queensland University of Technology. I am a past president of the Statistical Society of Australia. I am the current president of the Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-Research and Open Science. I am interested in improving the quality of research, in particular how researchers use statistics and how research is funded.","tags":null,"title":"","type":"top","url":"/top/about/","weight":0,"wordcount":57},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":-62135596800,"description":"","dir":"top\\","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":300,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"page","lang":"en","lastmod":-62135596800,"objectID":"7f562a6969c29f61888915197e7d6544","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/top/ideas/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":2,"relpermalink":"/top/ideas/","section":"top","summary":"These are some abandoned ideas that are free for others to re-use. These were things that I thought about, but now no longer have the time to pursue. Some of them are getting a bit old, and I haven\u0026rsquo;t checked to see if they have already been published by others.\nI stole this idea from the economist Paul Frijters who put his own abandoned ideas on his blog. I use the same approach as Paul:","tags":null,"title":"","type":"top","url":"/top/ideas/","weight":0,"wordcount":277},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":-62135596800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"taxonomy","lang":"en","lastmod":-62135596800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/categories/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/categories/","section":"categories","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"Categories","type":"categories","url":"/categories/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":-62135596800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"section","lang":"en","lastmod":-62135596800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/search/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/search/","section":"search","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"Searches","type":"search","url":"/search/","weight":0,"wordcount":0},{"author":null,"categories":null,"content":null,"date":-62135596800,"description":"","dir":"","excerpt_html":null,"excerpt_text":null,"expirydate":-62135596800,"fuzzywordcount":100,"html":null,"keywords":null,"kind":"section","lang":"en","lastmod":-62135596800,"objectID":"","permalink":"https://medianwatch.netlify.app/top/","publishdate":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z","readingtime":0,"relpermalink":"/top/","section":"top","summary":"","tags":null,"title":"Tops","type":"top","url":"/top/","weight":0,"wordcount":0}]