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_Negative results sit in a file drawer, or the trial keeps going in hopes the results turn positive._ There is a more unfortunate scenario that often plays out
by weego 16y ago
_Negative results sit in a file drawer, or the trial keeps going in hopes the results turn positive._
There is a more unfortunate scenario that often plays out. That is that they get a different statistician in who has a goal of getting positive looking results out of a negative result set though various means and then often carefully manipulating the wording of the success criteria to match their best attempt at making the data work. This is quite common, my partner (in the girlfriend sense) work within medial journal publishing and sees it quite a lot.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago...manipulating the wording of the success criteria to match their best attempt at making the data work. While not impossible, it is very tricky to do this before you actually have the data. I'm advocating that the wording of the test criteria, statistical tests to perform, etc, are all decided before the trial. Bringing in a different statistician post-hoc is pointless, all he could do is run the exact predetermined statistical test. In fact, you can do even better: submit code to the journal before the study, and submit data after the study. The journal runs the code on the data and decides which conclusion to publish.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- rdtsc 16y agoVery good point. The "good" statistician then gets a bonus at the end of the year for being productive and helpful. The "honest" statistician gets slowly pushed out. Accumulate this over the whole range of companies and studies and we end with a disaster.