DataScience4you2me

Kevin Lewis sends along this article , commenting, “That’s one smokin’ file drawer!” Here’s the story, courtesy of Clayton Velicer, Gideon St. Helen, and Stanton Glantz: We examined the relationship between the tobacco industry and the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology (RTP) using the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library and internet sources. We determined the funding relationships, and categorised the conclusions of all 52 RTP papers on tobacco or nicotine between January 2013 and June 2015, as “positive”, “negative” or “neutral” for the tobacco industry. RTP’s editor, 57% (4/7) of associate editors and 37% (14/38) of editorial board members had worked or consulted for tobacco companies. Almost all (96%, 50/52) of the papers had authors with tobacco industry ties. Seventy-six percent (38/50) of these papers drew conclusions positive for industry; none drew negative conclusions. The two papers by authors not related to the tobacco industry reached conclusions negati...

Javier Benitez points us to this article from 2014 by Susan Howitt and Anna Wilson, which has subtitle, “The way textbooks and scientific research articles are being used to teach undergraduate students could convey a misleading image of scientific research,” and begins: In 1963, Peter Medawar gave a talk, Is the scientific paper a fraud?, in which he argued that scientific journal articles give a false impression of the real process of scientific discovery. In answering his question, he argued that, “The scientific paper in its orthodox form does embody a totally mistaken conception, even a travesty, of the nature of scientific thought.” His main concern was that the highly formalized structure gives only a sanitized version of how scientists come to a conclusion and that it leaves no room for authors to discuss the thought processes that led to the experiments. Medawar explained that papers were presented to appear as if the scientists had no pre-conceived expectations about the ...

Zach Shahn writes: After watching Tennys Sandgren play in the Australian Open quarterfinals last night, I think it might be time to accept that the dentists named Dennis people were onto something. Looking him up revealed that he was named after his great grandfather and not by a Richard Williams type parent who planned on grooming him into a pro. And on top of his name, he grew up in Tennessee. So he’s a tennis player named Tennys from Tennessee. Incidentally, it turns out he also seems to be a white supremacist who was a proponent of the “pizza-gate” theory… [no, not that Pizzagate — ed.] I responded by pointing to this guy : a man named Hazard who was an expert on legal ethics. Shahn replied: Presumably he was a very moral Hazard. And that’s all for the day. The post Of Tennys players and moral Hazards appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science . from Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science https://ift.tt/2mO6kfV...

I (Phil) just read an article about Apple. Here’s the last sentence: “Apple has beaten earnings expectations in every quarter but one since March 2013.” The post How dumb do you have to be… appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science . from Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science https://ift.tt/2LvoDFe via IFTTT

It’s here , and he even calls it a “bag of tricks”! Robin’s suggestions are similar to what Deb and I recommend , but Robin’s article is a crisp 25 pages and is purely focused on general advice for getting things to go well in the classroom, whereas we spend most of our book on specific activities related to statistics. Robin’s article would fit in well as a chapter in our book. Considered in that context, I’d say it’s better than the corresponding material in our book (in the second edition, this is Chapter 12, “How to do it”). I prefer Robin’s article to our chapter because Robin’s article is more focused on what the teacher should do to maintain 100% student involvement during the entire class period. Here are the sections of the article : Introduction Basics Philosophy Typical classroom mechanics Highly recommended procedures Class composition and small group dynamics Doing the rounds Help we’re stuck Getting groups to work together Free riders Staying on task Stu...

Sean Talts and Bob Carpenter pointed us to this awesome MCMC animation site by Chi Feng. For instance, here’s NUTS on a banana-shaped density . This is indeed super-cool, and maybe there’s a way to connect these with Stan/ShinyStan/Bayesplot so as to automatically make movies of Stan model fits. This would be great, both to help understand what the sampler is doing, and to demonstrate to outsiders what Stan does. The post Awesome MCMC animation site by Chi Feng! On Github! appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science . from Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science https://ift.tt/2LLj1GB via IFTTT

While reading this post by Seth Frey on famous scientists who couldn’t let go of bad ideas, I followed a link to this post by David Gorski from 2010 entitled, “Luc Montagnier: The Nobel disease strikes again.” The quick story is that Montagnier endorsed some dubious theories. Here’s Gorski: He only won the Nobel Prize in 2008, and it only took him two years to endorse homepathy-like concepts. He’s also made a name for himself, such as it is, by appearing in the HIV/AIDS denialist film House of Numbers stating that HIV can be cleared naturally through nutrition and supplements. This he did after publishing a paper in a journal that for which himelf is the editor . . . But that’s just the beginning: From there it only took Montagnier a few months more to turn his eye to applying that “knowledge” to autism . . . Unfortunately, the pseudoscience that Montagnier appears to have embraced with respect to autism is combined with a highly unethical study . . . The trial is sponsored by ...