Slides from my March 17 presentation on “Severe Testing: The Key to Error Correction” given at the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science Alfred I.Taub forum on “Understanding Reproducibility and Error Correction in Science.”
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Slides from the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science: “Severe Testing: The Key to Error Correction”
A new front in the statistics wars? Peaceful negotiation in the face of so-called ‘methodological terrorism’
I haven’t been blogging that much lately, as I’m tethered to the task of finishing revisions on a book (on the philosophy of statistical inference!) But I noticed two interesting blogposts, one by Jeff Leek, another by Andrew Gelman, and even a related petition on Twitter, reflecting a newish front in the statistics wars: When it comes to improving scientific integrity, do we need more carrots or more sticks?
Leek’s post, from yesterday, called “Statistical Vitriol” (29 Sep 2016), calls for de-escalation of the consequences of statistical mistakes:
Over the last few months there has been a lot of vitriol around statistical ideas. First there were data parasites and then there were methodological terrorists. These epithets came from established scientists who have relatively little statistical training. There was the predictable backlash to these folks from their counterparties, typically statisticians or statistically trained folks who care about open source.
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Categories: Anil Potti, fraud, Gelman, pseudoscience, Statistics
“What does it say about our national commitment to research integrity?”
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There’s an important guest editorial by Keith Baggerly and C.K. Gunsalus in today’s issue of the Cancer Letter: “Penalty Too Light” on the Duke U. (Potti/Nevins) cancer trial fraud*. Here are some excerpts.
publication date: Nov 13, 2015
What does it say about our national commitment to research integrity that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Research Integrity has concluded that a five-year ban on federal research funding for one individual researcher is a sufficient response to a case involving millions of taxpayer dollars, completely fabricated data, and hundreds to thousands of patients in invasive clinical trials?
This week, ORI released a notice of “final action” in the case of Anil Potti, M.D. The ORI found that Dr. Potti engaged in several instances of research misconduct and banned him from receiving federal funding for five years.
(See my previous post.)
The principles involved are important and the facts complicated. This was not just a matter of research integrity. This was also a case involving direct patient care and millions of dollars in federal and other funding. The duration and extent of deception were extreme. The case catalyzed an Institute of Medicine review of genomics in clinical trials and attracted national media attention.
If there are no further conclusions coming from ORI and if there are no other investigations under way—despite the importance of the issues involved and the five years that have elapsed since research misconduct investigation began, we do not know—a strong argument can be made that neither justice nor the research community have been served by this outcome. Continue reading
Categories: Anil Potti, fraud, science communication, Statistics
The Statistics Wars & Their Casualties
LSE PH500 Research Seminar (May 21-June 25, 2020): Controversies in Phil Stat
Summer Seminar 2019 (article)
Experts convene to explore new philosophy of statistics field
Error Statistics Philosophy 