“𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 implies specific types of association such as monotone trends or clustering, 𝒃𝙪𝒕 𝒏𝙤𝒕 𝒄𝙖𝒖𝙨𝒂𝙩𝒊𝙤𝒏.” 🔗: moodle2.units.it/pluginfile.p...

New paper from colleagues in the @hpscireland.bsky.social w/ James Gleeson @unioflimerick.bsky.social Detecting changepoints in dynamical systems: Modeling time-varying transmission of seasonal influenza www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

“As 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙮𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙢 𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙨 𝙥𝙤𝙤𝙧 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙘𝙝 it is the system that should be changed. We need less research, better research, and 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬. 𝘼𝙗𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙤𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙪𝙢𝙗𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙛 𝙥𝙪𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙢𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙖𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙗𝙚 𝙖 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙩.”

"Standard research practice in medical research" = "Is this research misconduct"?

“The percentage of predicted adult height, whether determined using the Khamis-Roche method or any alternative protocol, is an inconsistent simple ratio statistic for determining the extent of completed growth in adolescent athletes.”

“The 𝒍𝙞𝒎𝙞𝒕𝙖𝒕𝙞𝒐𝙣𝒔 𝒐𝙛 𝙧𝒂𝙩𝒊𝙤𝒔 such as the BMI in human growth research have been well known since James Tanner’s 1949 expose on the topic (Tanner 1949a)”…

Ian Hussey (@ianhussey.mmmdata.io) contacted me about the recurring problem of unusually large SMD values appearing in published meta-analyses. Very large SMDs can result from using SEs in place of SDs in their calculation, which is a mistake I have also seen in practice. 1/4

Speaking of crazy d values, this reminds me of this feature I was thinking about adding to the forest() function in metafor. #Rstats #MetaAnalysis

A big study that was cited as evidence that text generators are good for students has been retracted: www.linkedin.com/posts/ben-wi... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

John Carlin says, “‘Identifying variables that independently predict…’ is not a well-defined research task” statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/05/02/5...

🎯So many important points packed into this editorial. ht @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy to share our publication in FRBM. We used aggregated sets of n-of-1 trials to study individual oxidative stress & inflammation responses to vit C supplementation. Huge thanks to @lorenzololli.bsky.social @gregatki.bsky.social @mg-nikolaidis.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

1. The paper with the implausibly large effects of Omega-3 fatty acids on mental health was now retracted. A little thread on the process where @ianhussey.mmmdata.io and I was involved. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How AI use in scholarly publishing threatens research integrity, lessens trust, and invites misinformation

48th #Retraction for Didier Raoult - by @plosone.org - because the IRB approvals did not cover all regions and experiments. PubPeer concerns raised by me in March 2021: pubpeer.com/publications... journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Just saw this new paper by Brauer on how linear models of mean effect can be very misleading for ordinal data link.springer.com/article/10.1...

So you carried out a controlled clinical trial? Bravo. Make sure you carry out a controlled analysis. You can bin those within-group standard errors, comparisons back to baselines and dynamite detonator plots for a start. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2277879/

Nice paper on effective sample size for Kaplan-Meier survival curve estimates: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #Statistics #StatsSky

𝗦𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗥-𝗱: 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗥 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁-𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆. Cole, T. J., Sandhu, S., & Elhakeem, A. (2026). @annalshumanbio.bsky.social, 53(1). doi.org/10.1080/0301....

I wrote a perspective for Anesthesia & Analgesia - "Seeing Is Believing? Scientific Misconduct and the Detection of Problematic Images" Still trying to make it Open Access. Fingers crossed! journals.lww.com/anesthesia-a...

✨ New open-access book✨ I’ve seen how powerful prediction models can be, but also how often they fall short. We wrote a book, covering not just development, but also when models are needed, and how to ensure real-world impact. www.maastrichtuniversitypress.nl/cpm

Fantastic new paper casting doubt on explainability of explainable AI. To explain complex machine learning algorithms you need reproducibility of the explanation at a minimum academic.oup.com/ehjdh/articl... #machinelearning #Statistics #StatsSky @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social

"Research should not only be independent of vested interests but must also be seen to be so" My @bmj.com piece with @fphuk.bsky.social president Tracy Daszkiewicz argues we need a public health approach to study the impact of digital technology on health. #CDOH www.bmj.com/content/392/...

Maybe of interest: The submission guidelines of Psychological Science now demand an explicit statement on measures taken to reduce the risk of AI-generated responses for all online studies! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Ratios are misleading exposure variables that compromise a regression model unless fundamental scaling assumptions are satisfied: a comment on Valente et al - Journal of Clinical Epidemiology www.jclinepi.com/article/S089...

Want to make your research more meaningful? Ornithology? Smear the lenses of your binoculars with vaseline. You may not be able to tell a hawk from an eagle but you won’t mistake a sparrow for an ostrich. Clinical research? Why not use responder dichotomies? pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

for critique see here: pubpeer.com/publications...

𝙄𝙢𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙙 𝘾𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙀𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙗𝙮 𝙏𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝘼𝙣𝙙/𝙊𝙧 𝘼𝙙𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙎𝙢𝙤𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙀𝙭𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙮 𝙑𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚. Rigby RA, Stasinopoulos DM, Cole TJ. Stat Med. 2026 Feb;45(3-5):e70414. doi: 10.1002/sim.70414. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Fascinating stuff. However, IMO, the value of double blind trials is not just dealing with patient- centred biases but physician-biases and this is often overlooked. www.linkedin.com/pulse/blind-...?

Die, Dichotomy. www.linkedin.com/pulse/die-di... A brief post encouraging you to read the original paper with @erik-van-zwet.bsky.social and @f2harrell.bsky.social . onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Judging by the poor quality of biomarker research I see reported in biomedical journals, my article "How to Do Bad Biomarker Research" must have been hugely influential: www.fharrell.com/post/badb/in... #Statistics #StatsSky #EpiSky

Editor in Chief publishes eight articles in one issue of his (Scopus indexed) journal. Is that ethical? 🧵

“You will find that many alternative medicine enthusiasts are into proidiotics.” Sayings of Confuseus

“Assessing the properties of the prediction interval in random-effects meta-analysis” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Our letter to editor about Caldwell et al (J Appl Physiol 139: 1220–1227, 2025) is published: journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.... There seemed misconceptions about variance comparison stats. We also commented on the author's “SD of treatment effects”. Suppl stuff: zenodo.org/records/1777...

#neuroscience #biomedicine #researchintegrity

How long should it take to retract a paper with incontrovertible signs of data fabrication? Sleuths think 2 months is too long, particularly when clinical risks are involved. deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/01/an-o... #retraction #stemcells #cardiology @erictopol.bsky.social

“An AI scientist, for example, could figure out how the human brain works, or deliver any gene to any cell in the body.” Yeah and a magic pony could shit bricks of 24k gold and piss a highly concentrated solution of pure heroin.

Most researchers would receive more recognition if assessed by article-level metrics than by journal-level metrics buff.ly/EhQn7JQ

‪It has a name now 😜 Many thanks to Ken for agreeing to put his good name to my...artwork. The image is in the public domain (CC 0), but citations to the linked documents are warmly welcomed. ✅ zenodo.org/records/1808... ✅ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24452418/

The best bit about the show Tipping Point is when the host, Ben Shephard, says "let's find out what would have happened if you'd decided to play". There's always a nagging doubt at the back of my mind: that's not really what *would* have happened, is it?

“Re-examination of the 3/4-law of metabolism” and “Toward a metabolic theory of ecology” statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/12/18/r...

Yeah. And before this, half of reviewers were submitting trivial, short reviews that either said "looks good to me" or "this is excrement". This is why reviews should be part of the public record for any paper. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗯𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝗽𝘂𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗱𝘂𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝗜 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀 𝗜𝗜 𝘀𝗸𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗽𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝘆𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗦𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗥) 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹

Weekend reads: ‘The fall of a prolific science journal’; Clinical trials by ‘super-retractors’; ‘How to Study Things That May Not Exist’

OMG - it’s like the old days of Hindawi AI gobbledegook sandwiches www.nature.com/articles/s41...

More nonsense from Scientific Reports www.nature.com/articles/s41... This article may be many things, but scientific it ain’t

this is one of my favourite observations about sample size calculations. (afaik first articulated by Miettinen in 1985)

For some research studies the optimal sample size should be estimated at 0

“The worrying thing is that most of the published literature is 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙨𝙤 𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙩 and one wonders 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗳 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘃𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲.” - spot on @deevybee.bsky.social.