andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2014 andrew_gelman_stats-2014-2215 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Somebody points me to this horrifying exposé by Paul Raeburn on a new series by the Washington Post where they reprint press releases as if they are actual news. And the gimmick is, the reason why it’s appearing on this blog, is that these are university press releases on science stories . What could possibly go wrong there? After all, Steve Chaplin, a self-identified “science-writing PIO from an R1,” writes in a comment to Raeburn’s post: We write about peer-reviewed research accepted for publication or published by the world’s leading scientific journals after that research has been determined to be legitimate. Repeatability of new research is a publication requisite. I emphasized that last sentence myself because it was such a stunner. Do people really think that??? So I guess what he’s saying is, they don’t do press releases for articles from Psychological Science or the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . But I wonder how the profs in the psych d
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Somebody points me to this horrifying exposé by Paul Raeburn on a new series by the Washington Post where they reprint press releases as if they are actual news. [sent-1, score-1.334]
2 And the gimmick is, the reason why it’s appearing on this blog, is that these are university press releases on science stories . [sent-2, score-1.269]
3 After all, Steve Chaplin, a self-identified “science-writing PIO from an R1,” writes in a comment to Raeburn’s post: We write about peer-reviewed research accepted for publication or published by the world’s leading scientific journals after that research has been determined to be legitimate. [sent-4, score-0.585]
4 Repeatability of new research is a publication requisite. [sent-5, score-0.207]
5 I emphasized that last sentence myself because it was such a stunner. [sent-6, score-0.169]
6 So I guess what he’s saying is, they don’t do press releases for articles from Psychological Science or the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . [sent-10, score-0.845]
7 But I wonder how the profs in the psych dept at Chaplin’s university feel about being singled out like that? [sent-11, score-0.618]
8 To be serious for a moment, yes, we have a press office at Columbia. [sent-14, score-0.617]
9 And, yes, I love it when they publicize my work. [sent-15, score-0.181]
10 But it’s the job of a serious journalist to read the press release and use it in a story, not just to reprint it! [sent-17, score-0.985]
11 It seems that one of the editors of the Post’s science section is named Pooh Shapiro. [sent-20, score-0.32]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('press', 0.435), ('releases', 0.358), ('chaplin', 0.31), ('raeburn', 0.31), ('reprint', 0.283), ('repeatability', 0.141), ('pooh', 0.141), ('horrifying', 0.141), ('publication', 0.124), ('singled', 0.123), ('publicize', 0.123), ('gimmick', 0.116), ('profs', 0.116), ('dept', 0.114), ('psych', 0.111), ('post', 0.109), ('serious', 0.108), ('science', 0.103), ('university', 0.101), ('yes', 0.094), ('emphasized', 0.093), ('appearing', 0.093), ('personality', 0.087), ('determined', 0.087), ('research', 0.083), ('journalist', 0.082), ('steve', 0.08), ('washington', 0.079), ('accepted', 0.079), ('editors', 0.078), ('release', 0.077), ('named', 0.077), ('moment', 0.076), ('sentence', 0.076), ('office', 0.074), ('somebody', 0.069), ('psychological', 0.069), ('possibly', 0.068), ('paul', 0.068), ('cool', 0.067), ('leading', 0.065), ('journals', 0.064), ('stories', 0.063), ('section', 0.062), ('series', 0.06), ('love', 0.058), ('actual', 0.057), ('psychology', 0.055), ('wonder', 0.053), ('articles', 0.052)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 1.0 2215 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-17-The Washington Post reprints university press releases without editing them
Introduction: Somebody points me to this horrifying exposé by Paul Raeburn on a new series by the Washington Post where they reprint press releases as if they are actual news. And the gimmick is, the reason why it’s appearing on this blog, is that these are university press releases on science stories . What could possibly go wrong there? After all, Steve Chaplin, a self-identified “science-writing PIO from an R1,” writes in a comment to Raeburn’s post: We write about peer-reviewed research accepted for publication or published by the world’s leading scientific journals after that research has been determined to be legitimate. Repeatability of new research is a publication requisite. I emphasized that last sentence myself because it was such a stunner. Do people really think that??? So I guess what he’s saying is, they don’t do press releases for articles from Psychological Science or the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . But I wonder how the profs in the psych d
2 0.19983521 1122 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-16-“Groundbreaking or Definitive? Journals Need to Pick One”
Introduction: Sanjay Srivastava writes : As long as a journal pursues a strategy of publishing “wow” studies, it will inevitably contain more unreplicable findings and unsupportable conclusions than equally rigorous but more “boring” journals. Groundbreaking will always be higher-risk. And definitive will be the territory of journals that publish meta-analyses and reviews. . . . Most conclusions, even those in peer-reviewed papers in rigorous journals, should be regarded as tentative at best; but press releases and other public communication rarely convey that. . . . His message to all of us: Our standard response to a paper in Science, Nature, or Psychological Science should be “wow, that’ll be really interesting if it replicates.” And in our teaching and our engagement with the press and public, we need to make clear why that is the most enthusiastic response we can justify.
3 0.19397964 2301 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-22-Ticket to Baaaaarf
Introduction: A link from the comments here took me to the wonderfully named Barfblog and a report by Don Schaffner on some reporting. First, the background: A university in England issued a press release saying that “Food picked up just a few seconds after being dropped is less likely to contain bacteria than if it is left for longer periods of time . . . The findings suggest there may be some scientific basis to the ‘5 second rule’ – the urban myth about it being fine to eat food that has only had contact with the floor for five seconds or less. Although people have long followed the 5 second rule, until now it was unclear whether it actually helped.” According to the press release, the study was “undertaken by final year Biology students” and led by a professor of microbiology. The press release hit the big time, hitting NPR, Slate, Forbes, the Daily News, etc etc. Some typical headlines: “5-second rule backed up by science” — Atlanta Journal Constitution “Eating food off the floo
4 0.17063642 2214 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-17-On deck this week
Introduction: Mon : The Washington Post reprints university press releases without editing them Tues : Florida backlash Wed : The replication and criticism movement is not about suppressing speculative research; rather, it’s all about enabling science’s fabled self-correcting nature Thurs : Do differences between biology and statistics explain some of our diverging attitudes regarding criticism and replication of scientific claims? Fri : The world’s most popular languages that the Mac documentation hasn’t been translated into
5 0.14662074 2278 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-01-Association for Psychological Science announces a new journal
Introduction: The Association for Psychological Science, the leading organization of research psychologists, announced a long-awaited new journal, Speculations on Psychological Science . From the official APS press release: Speculations on Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science, will publish cutting-edge research articles, short reports, and research reports spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology. We anticipate that Speculations on Psychological Science will be the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. We recognize that many of the most noteworthy published claims in psychology and related fields are not well supported by data, hence the need for a journal for the publication of such exciting speculations without misleading claims of certainty. - Sigmund Watson, Prof. (Ret.) Miskatonic University, and editor-in-chief, Speculations on Psychological Science I applaud this development. Indeed, I’ve been talking ab
6 0.13533823 2088 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-04-Recently in the sister blog
7 0.10963399 2006 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-03-Evaluating evidence from published research
8 0.10827117 1878 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-31-How to fix the tabloids? Toward replicable social science research
9 0.099121682 1291 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-30-Systematic review of publication bias in studies on publication bias
10 0.098829061 1139 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-26-Suggested resolution of the Bem paradox
12 0.09661179 2245 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-12-More on publishing in journals
13 0.095296919 976 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-27-Geophysicist Discovers Modeling Error (in Economics)
14 0.091650806 2234 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-05-Plagiarism, Arizona style
15 0.09148021 1928 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-06-How to think about papers published in low-grade journals?
16 0.091114685 2049 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-03-On house arrest for p-hacking
17 0.090944208 942 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-04-45% hitting, 25% fielding, 25% pitching, and 100% not telling us how they did it
18 0.090540931 2244 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-11-What if I were to stop publishing in journals?
19 0.083290465 436 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-29-Quality control problems at the New York Times
20 0.081396937 2361 andrew gelman stats-2014-06-06-Hurricanes vs. Himmicanes
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.112), (1, -0.077), (2, -0.072), (3, -0.074), (4, -0.055), (5, -0.003), (6, -0.001), (7, -0.086), (8, -0.046), (9, 0.022), (10, 0.051), (11, 0.017), (12, -0.014), (13, 0.017), (14, -0.028), (15, -0.01), (16, -0.013), (17, 0.014), (18, 0.01), (19, -0.009), (20, 0.019), (21, -0.005), (22, -0.017), (23, -0.021), (24, -0.013), (25, -0.017), (26, -0.012), (27, 0.017), (28, -0.019), (29, -0.014), (30, -0.013), (31, -0.021), (32, -0.004), (33, -0.016), (34, 0.007), (35, 0.007), (36, -0.007), (37, 0.002), (38, -0.014), (39, -0.011), (40, -0.012), (41, 0.015), (42, 0.016), (43, 0.001), (44, 0.031), (45, 0.053), (46, 0.02), (47, 0.048), (48, -0.032), (49, 0.003)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.97637069 2215 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-17-The Washington Post reprints university press releases without editing them
Introduction: Somebody points me to this horrifying exposé by Paul Raeburn on a new series by the Washington Post where they reprint press releases as if they are actual news. And the gimmick is, the reason why it’s appearing on this blog, is that these are university press releases on science stories . What could possibly go wrong there? After all, Steve Chaplin, a self-identified “science-writing PIO from an R1,” writes in a comment to Raeburn’s post: We write about peer-reviewed research accepted for publication or published by the world’s leading scientific journals after that research has been determined to be legitimate. Repeatability of new research is a publication requisite. I emphasized that last sentence myself because it was such a stunner. Do people really think that??? So I guess what he’s saying is, they don’t do press releases for articles from Psychological Science or the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . But I wonder how the profs in the psych d
2 0.86774409 2278 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-01-Association for Psychological Science announces a new journal
Introduction: The Association for Psychological Science, the leading organization of research psychologists, announced a long-awaited new journal, Speculations on Psychological Science . From the official APS press release: Speculations on Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science, will publish cutting-edge research articles, short reports, and research reports spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology. We anticipate that Speculations on Psychological Science will be the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. We recognize that many of the most noteworthy published claims in psychology and related fields are not well supported by data, hence the need for a journal for the publication of such exciting speculations without misleading claims of certainty. - Sigmund Watson, Prof. (Ret.) Miskatonic University, and editor-in-chief, Speculations on Psychological Science I applaud this development. Indeed, I’ve been talking ab
Introduction: Jeff Leek points to a post by Alex Holcombe, who disputes the idea that science is self-correcting. Holcombe writes [scroll down to get to his part]: The pace of scientific production has quickened, and self-correction has suffered. Findings that might correct old results are considered less interesting than results from more original research questions. Potential corrections are also more contested. As the competition for space in prestigious journals has become increasingly frenzied, doing and publishing studies that would confirm the rapidly accumulating new discoveries, or would correct them, became a losing proposition. Holcombe picks up on some points that we’ve discussed a lot here in the past year. Here’s Holcombe: In certain subfields, almost all new work appears in only a very few journals, all associated with a single professional society. There is then no way around the senior gatekeepers, who may then suppress corrections with impunity. . . . The bias agai
4 0.83569616 1139 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-26-Suggested resolution of the Bem paradox
Introduction: There has been an increasing discussion about the proliferation of flawed research in psychology and medicine, with some landmark events being John Ioannides’s article , “Why most published research findings are false” (according to Google Scholar, cited 973 times since its appearance in 2005), the scandals of Marc Hauser and Diederik Stapel, two leading psychology professors who resigned after disclosures of scientific misconduct, and Daryl Bem’s dubious recent paper on ESP, published to much fanfare in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, one of the top journals in the field. Alongside all this are the plagiarism scandals, which are uninteresting from a scientific context but are relevant in that, in many cases, neither the institutions housing the plagiarists nor the editors and publishers of the plagiarized material seem to care. Perhaps these universities and publishers are more worried about bad publicity (and maybe lawsuits, given that many of the plagiarism cas
5 0.82163745 1321 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-15-A statistical research project: Weeding out the fraudulent citations
Introduction: John Mashey points me to a blog post by Phil Davis on “the emergence of a citation cartel.” Davis tells the story: Cell Transplantation is a medical journal published by the Cognizant Communication Corporation of Putnam Valley, New York. In recent years, its impact factor has been growing rapidly. In 2006, it was 3.482 [I think he means "3.5"---ed.]. In 2010, it had almost doubled to 6.204. When you look at which journals cite Cell Transplantation, two journals stand out noticeably: the Medical Science Monitor, and The Scientific World Journal. According to the JCR, neither of these journals cited Cell Transplantation until 2010. Then, in 2010, a review article was published in the Medical Science Monitor citing 490 articles, 445 of which were to papers published in Cell Transplantation. All 445 citations pointed to papers published in 2008 or 2009 — the citation window from which the journal’s 2010 impact factor was derived. Of the remaining 45 citations, 44 cited the Me
7 0.8152945 1122 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-16-“Groundbreaking or Definitive? Journals Need to Pick One”
8 0.79757333 838 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-04-Retraction Watch
9 0.79711467 1878 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-31-How to fix the tabloids? Toward replicable social science research
10 0.78225827 762 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-13-How should journals handle replication studies?
11 0.76879185 1435 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-30-Retracted articles and unethical behavior in economics journals?
12 0.76089972 834 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-01-I owe it all to the haters
13 0.7518841 1928 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-06-How to think about papers published in low-grade journals?
14 0.74173939 2245 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-12-More on publishing in journals
15 0.73897922 1998 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-25-A new Bem theory
16 0.73836565 1137 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-24-Difficulties in publishing non-replications of implausible findings
18 0.73683637 2179 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-20-The AAA Tranche of Subprime Science
19 0.72840202 1291 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-30-Systematic review of publication bias in studies on publication bias
20 0.72758156 2177 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-19-“The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness”
topicId topicWeight
[(1, 0.017), (2, 0.033), (10, 0.201), (15, 0.079), (16, 0.048), (21, 0.022), (24, 0.102), (26, 0.016), (30, 0.02), (43, 0.011), (59, 0.038), (68, 0.031), (86, 0.063), (94, 0.013), (99, 0.195)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.89904374 2215 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-17-The Washington Post reprints university press releases without editing them
Introduction: Somebody points me to this horrifying exposé by Paul Raeburn on a new series by the Washington Post where they reprint press releases as if they are actual news. And the gimmick is, the reason why it’s appearing on this blog, is that these are university press releases on science stories . What could possibly go wrong there? After all, Steve Chaplin, a self-identified “science-writing PIO from an R1,” writes in a comment to Raeburn’s post: We write about peer-reviewed research accepted for publication or published by the world’s leading scientific journals after that research has been determined to be legitimate. Repeatability of new research is a publication requisite. I emphasized that last sentence myself because it was such a stunner. Do people really think that??? So I guess what he’s saying is, they don’t do press releases for articles from Psychological Science or the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . But I wonder how the profs in the psych d
2 0.87376958 1122 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-16-“Groundbreaking or Definitive? Journals Need to Pick One”
Introduction: Sanjay Srivastava writes : As long as a journal pursues a strategy of publishing “wow” studies, it will inevitably contain more unreplicable findings and unsupportable conclusions than equally rigorous but more “boring” journals. Groundbreaking will always be higher-risk. And definitive will be the territory of journals that publish meta-analyses and reviews. . . . Most conclusions, even those in peer-reviewed papers in rigorous journals, should be regarded as tentative at best; but press releases and other public communication rarely convey that. . . . His message to all of us: Our standard response to a paper in Science, Nature, or Psychological Science should be “wow, that’ll be really interesting if it replicates.” And in our teaching and our engagement with the press and public, we need to make clear why that is the most enthusiastic response we can justify.
3 0.83798099 78 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-10-Hey, where’s my kickback?
Introduction: I keep hearing about textbook publishers who practically bribe instructors to assign their textbooks to students. And then I received this (unsolicited) email: You have recently been sent Pearson (Allyn & Bacon, Longman, Prentice Hall) texts to review for your summer and fall courses. As a thank you for reviewing our texts, I would like to invite you to participate in a brief survey (attached). If you have any questions about the survey, are not sure which books you have been sent, or if you would like to receive instructor’s materials, desk copies, etc. please let me know! If you have recently received your course assignments – let me know as well . Additionally, if you have decided to use a Pearson book in your summer or fall courses, I will provide you with an ISBN that will include discounts and resources for your students at no extra cost! All you have to do is answer the 3 simple questions on the attached survey and you will receive a $10.00 Dunkin Donuts gift card.
4 0.82432902 1810 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-17-Subway series
Introduction: Abby points us to a spare but cool visualization . I don’t like the curvy connect-the-dots line, but my main suggested improvement would be a closer link to the map . Showing median income on census tracts along subway lines is cool, but ultimately it’s a clever gimmick that pulls me in and makes me curious about what the map looks like. (And, thanks to google, the map was easy to find.)
5 0.80466425 487 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-27-Alfred Kahn
Introduction: Appointed “inflation czar” in late 1970s, Alfred Kahn is most famous for deregulating the airline industry. At the time this seemed to make sense, although in retrospect I’m less a fan of consumer-driven policies than I used to be. When I was a kid we subscribed to Consumer Reports and so I just assumed that everything that was good for the consumer–lower prices, better products, etc.–was a good thing. Upon reflection, though, I think it’s a mistake to focus too narrowly on the interests of consumers. For example (from my Taleb review a couple years ago): The discussion on page 112 of how Ralph Nader saved lives (mostly via seat belts in cars) reminds me of his car-bumper campaign in the 1970s. My dad subscribed to Consumer Reports then (he still does, actually, and I think reads it for pleasure–it must be one of those Depression-mentality things), and at one point they were pushing heavily for the 5-mph bumpers. Apparently there was some federal regulation about how strong
7 0.78730935 2257 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-20-The candy weighing demonstration, or, the unwisdom of crowds
8 0.7860471 37 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-17-Is chartjunk really “more useful” than plain graphs? I don’t think so.
9 0.78307283 1064 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-16-The benefit of the continuous color scale
10 0.77692533 1402 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-01-Ice cream! and temperature
11 0.7690838 357 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-20-Sas and R
12 0.76850343 1744 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-01-Why big effects are more important than small effects
13 0.76823169 1974 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-08-Statistical significance and the dangerous lure of certainty
14 0.76821804 2014 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-09-False memories and statistical analysis
15 0.7493785 344 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-15-Story time
16 0.74866539 2277 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-31-The most-cited statistics papers ever
17 0.73668468 1435 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-30-Retracted articles and unethical behavior in economics journals?
18 0.73640567 133 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-08-Gratuitous use of “Bayesian Statistics,” a branding issue?
19 0.73324412 902 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-12-The importance of style in academic writing
20 0.73226196 1273 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-20-Proposals for alternative review systems for scientific work