The downside of publication

No one questions the vital role that publication and peer review play in scientific progress, says John Copas . Results and ideas are made available for discussion and debate, having been vetted first by independent referees. Although the system is not perfect, on the whole it works pretty well. But in the empirical sciences, the selection of papers for publication poses a very challenging problem.     

Place of living and health inequality: a study for elderly Italians

The aim of this study is to explore if the context matters in explaining socioeconomic inequality in the self-rated health of Italian elderly people. Our hypothesis is that health status perception is associated with existing huge imbalances among Italian areas. A multilevel approach is applied to account for the natural hierarchical structure, as individuals nested in geographical regions. Multilevel logistic regression models are performed including both individual and contextual variables, using data from 2005 Italian Health survey. We prove that individual factors (compositional effect), even representing the most important correlates of health, do not completely explain intra-regional heterogeneity, confirming the existence of an autonomous contextual effect. These territorial differences are present among both Regions and large areas, two geographical aggregations relevant in the domain of health. Moreover, for some Regions, the account for contextual factors explains variations in perceived health, leading to an overthrow of the initial situation: these Regions perform better than expected in the field of health. For other Regions, the contextual elements introduced do not catch the milieu heterogeneity. In this regard, we expect, and solicit, a major effort toward data availability, qualitatively and quantitatively, that might help in explaining residual territorial heterogeneity in health perception, a fundamental starting point for targeting specific policy interventions.     

Putting the P-Value in its Place

ABSTRACT

As the debate over best statistical practices continues in academic journals, conferences, and the blogosphere, working researchers (e.g., psychologists) need to figure out how much time and effort to invest in attending to experts' arguments, how to design their next project, and how to craft a sustainable long-term strategy for data analysis and inference. The present special issue of The American Statistician promises help. In this article, we offer a modest proposal for a continued and informed use of the conventional p-value without the pitfalls of statistical rituals. Other statistical indices should complement reporting, and extra-statistical (e.g., theoretical) judgments ought to be made with care and clarity.     

Robust confidence intervals for trend estimation in meta-analysis with publication bias

Confidence interval (CI) is very useful for trend estimation in meta-analysis. It provides a type of interval estimate of the regression slope as well as an indicator of the reliability of the estimate. Thus a precise calculation of confidence interval at an expected level is important. It is always difficult to explicitly quantify the CIs when there is publication bias in meta-analysis. Various CIs have been proposed, including the most widely used DerSimonian–Laird CI and the recently proposed Henmi–Copas CI. The latter provides a robust solution when there are non-ignorable missing data due to publication bias. In this paper we extended the idea into meta-analysis for trend estimation. We applied the method in different scenarios and showed that this type of CI is more robust than the others.     

The Place of Video in New Styles of Teaching and Learning Statistics

Strong movements in both education research and education reform are emphasizing that teaching should encourage student activity rather than simply aim knowledge in the general direction of a student audience. Yet video, at least in its traditional technological forms, is passive. How can teachers make effective use of an apparently ineffective medium? What role can video best play in new multimedia instructional systems? This article reviews research on learning through television in order to make practical suggestions. Specific examples use two widely distributed series, Against All Odds: Inside Statistics and Statistics: Decisions Through Data.     

未来国民经济核算将发生巨大变化

网络信息技术的发展,预示着我们将进入一个网络经济时代。特别是Internet技术的发展,对这种经济模式提供了强有力的保证。在网络经济时代,国民经济将会发生巨大的变化,传统的某些经济学理论将会失去解释功能。同时,网络经济也对国民经济核算提出了严峻的挑战。具体而言,国民经济核算会有以下一些新变化:●统计核算技术的变化●1994年,荷兰统计局局长沃特·J·凯勒（Wouter J·Keller）在预测统计的未来时指出,信息技术的发展将使信息的得到突破空间和时间的限制。所谓不受时间限制,是因为电子通讯设备能在任何时刻发出信息而又几…     

Proposed best practice for statisticians in the reporting and publication of pharmaceutical industry‐sponsored clinical trials

In this paper we set out what we consider to be a set of best practices for statisticians in the reporting of pharmaceutical industry‐sponsored clinical trials. We make eight recommendations covering: author responsibilities and recognition; publication timing; conflicts of interest; freedom to act; full author access to data; trial registration and independent review. These recommendations are made in the context of the prominent role played by statisticians in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of pharmaceutical sponsored trials and the perception of the reporting of these trials in the wider community. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.