I set up my Sega Saturn every year at Christmas. Whether or not I can get it working determines whether or not Christmas is ruined. Hard branching paths. Wish me luck.

I cannot be trusted to attend a meeting without a calendar invite

Have you got a PhD in Statistics (or related field) and experience in Statistical Consulting? A continuing position at the Australian National University is now open 🇦🇺🦘🐨. Would love to get an #rstats person if possible ☺️ Apply by 18 Jan 👉 jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/course-... #statssky #statsky

Out today in @annalsofim.bsky.social doi.org/10.7326/ANNA... Our systematic review of 11 RCTs found bisphosphonates may reduce short-term pain but increase risk for AEs. Results limited by substantial, unexplained heterogeneity, introduced by inclusion of terminated trial data.

You might be interested in the scrutiny R package lhdjung.github.io/scrutiny/ind... and the associated webapp errors.shinyapps.io/scrutiny/

We might be at a stage where systematic reviews without checks of trustworthiness become a problem in itself - even a danger to patients, as these reviews are considered as highest level of evidence and the foundation of guidelines and clinical practice

Superb and enlightening, if quite disturbing webinar. The recording is now up on the @chemistryworld.com YouTube channel. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWj5...

#rstats It is with profound sadness I heard that my long-time friend and colleague, John Fox passed away this week. He was the author of {car}, {effects}, {Rcmdr}, ... and numerous influential books. I will miss him greatly. www.john-fox.ca

People are already getting this wrong when using INSPECT-SR. This is going to be biggest headache I think.

Free online Intro to INSPECT-SR workshop in January - this one was designed to be convenient for Australian colleagues but may work for others too: www.trybooking.com/uk/FPDL

If missed out before, there are more spaces on this training now! More on INSPECT-SR here: www.cochrane.org/about-us/new...

Uh oh - I made a joke about a contentious topic

Do not try to reproduce p-values from rounded summary statistics. You can (should) check whether they are consistent - you can achieve this by calculating the largest/smallest p-value consistent with the rounded data. Mark Bolland’s app may help: reappraised.shinyapps.io/check_p_vals...

Why does every target trial emulation study have to include a bit that says "this shows how great target trial emulation is. RCTs are non-generalisable and expensive"? Imagine if every RCT said "this shows how great RCTs are. We did not have to rely on strong, untestable assumptions".

This tendency to confuse credibility of claims with “were the authors doing their best” is strong in psych. Eg defensiveness about Cross Lagged Panel Models despite now knowing they have false positives rates. “But they didn’t know that at the time” doesn’t increase evidential value now.

Never understand the idea that failing to pre-register an RCT before 2010 (say) does not constitute risk of bias. RoB is not about figuring out whether researchers did their best according to the standards of the time. Meta-research suggests that estimates did tend to reduce after intro of reg.

Our plenary speaker will be Lisa Bero, with 'Commercial influence on research: what, how and why' We do this work because health decision/policy should be based on evidence. I am particularly interested in the commercial determinants of health. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Bero #AIMOS2025

Have increased capacity for this December INSPECT-SR online training workshop following a successful 1st event today. Book here: www.trybooking.com/uk/FKHV

We've got loads of resources here for people to get started and be convinced to try it: asapbio.org/about/why-pr...

Happy to follow up individually if there's more info I can provide. See also our FAQs: asapbio.org/about/faq/pr...

We have senior people in our department telling PhD students not to post preprints as journals will refuse to publish due to prior publication. Is there anywhere in health this is actually true? Genuine question, but I doubt it?

Free online workshop for assessing trustworthiness of RCTs

I agree with Tim that the value of target trials is to help think about assumptions and limitations (what we would like to do vs what we can do). But I fear it is going to be used differently-to minimise limitations, implying a NRSI is as good as randomised tpmorris.substack.com/p/firing-at-...

Introductory online INSPECT-SR workshop. November 6th, 12-2pm UK-time. Free, places limited. BOOK: www.trybooking.com/uk/events/la...

Introductory online INSPECT-SR workshop. November 6th, 12-2pm UK-time. Free, places limited. BOOK: www.trybooking.com/uk/events/la...

Trying to reproduce results from old papers can take you to interesting places

International #ResearchIntegrity conference 16-18 November 2025 Come to hear @elisabethbik.bsky.social Ivan Oransky @jamesheathers.bsky.social @retractionwatch.com Lisa Bero @liammannix.bsky.social @jdwilko.bsky.social @jacksonwryan.com +many others, stay for Sydney in late Spring @sydney.edu.au 🧪

Nearly 3 months since I contacted both the authors and editor of @jama.com about failure to share data. Article states data and code is available, but the github repo is empty. Not private or partial, empty. Has never contained anything. No replies from anyone. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

For Monday crowd. INSPECT-SR, a tool to help you identify problematic (inc. fraudulent) RCTs, now available.

📚 INSPECT-SR: a tool for assessing trustworthiness of randomised controlled trials www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Science is not always as good as it appears on print in a research paper. Ready to be scared by finding nasty truths. Try out INSPECT-SR for checking the trustworthiness of trial results when you do systematic reviews.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... INSPECT-SR: A tool for assessing trustworthiness of randomised controlled trials.

One of the most common misunderstandings about the use and value of placebos in clinical RCTs, often made by both methodological experts and experienced trialists: (from @stephensenn.bsky.social in academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advan...)

Hoping INSPECT-SR will appear on medRxiV at some point today…

Last chance to participate - this will close on Sunday pm UK time. These results will be used to formulate guidance on demonstrating promise of an intervention when applying for funding for an RCT, pilot, or feasibility trial.

A letter from myself and @jdwilko.bsky.social that expands on this a bit more. Thanks to Fertility and Sterility for the opportunity. doi.org/10.1016/j.fe...

How to demonstrate ‘promise of the intervention’ ahead of an RCT of the intervention? If you’d like to participate in the final round of the Promise Delphi, even if you didn’t do Round 1, then get in touch!

Any OSF-heads have suggestions here? I noticed a typo in a public OSF document I had uploaded. So I deleted and uploaded the corrected version. But the new version (a Word document, same as the previous doc) won't display - 'Unexpected server response'. Any ideas?

Did you have a chance to catch @davidhosch.bsky.social, @neiloconnell.bsky.social, @jdwilko.bsky.social, @nadiasoliman.bsky.social, @lesleyuttley.bsky.social discuss “trustworthiness” in clinical trial data? Watch the recording here bit.ly/4luQVMS

Happening now!

Have you wanted to understand what is meant by “trustworthy” research? Attend this #webinar where @davidhosch.bsky.social, @neiloconnell.bsky.social, @jdwilko.bsky.social, @nadiasoliman.bsky.social, @lesleyuttley.bsky.social, and more outline how to produce reliable evidence bit.ly/44GBtGP

🔍 Systematic reviewers are the first line of defense for trustworthy science! 🛡️💡 Here’s why they must lead the charge for #ResearchIntegrity 👇 👉 www.cochrane.org/about-us/new... #EvidenceBased #MetaAnalysis #OpenScience 🧠📊

Nice piece on the tool that @cochrane.org are collaborating on - "Investigating Problematic Clinical Trials in Systematic Reviews (INSPECT-SR)" – to identify potentially problematic randomized controlled trials in systematic reviews Shout out to @jdwilko.bsky.social for all his work on this

Great to see increasing focus on the importance methodological rigour for the ethical conduct of patient focused research (thank you WMA Helsinki). Yet statisticians and other methods experts seem to often be left out of the conversation about solutions. statsepi.substack.com/p/everybodys...

Have you wanted to understand what is meant by “trustworthy” research? Attend this #webinar where @davidhosch.bsky.social, @neiloconnell.bsky.social, @jdwilko.bsky.social, @nadiasoliman.bsky.social, @lesleyuttley.bsky.social, and more outline how to produce reliable evidence bit.ly/44GBtGP

As soon as you say ‘it is unethical to randomly allocate people to a placebo’, you have shown you are not a serious commentator. You don’t understand the first thing about what trials involve.

What's that? The target trial emulation obtained the same answer as the RCT? Wow, I guess RCTs are generalisable after all! Perhaps we should perform them rather than using interventions on hundreds of thousands of people before we know whether or not they work, then doing a TTE?

0197eb9d-ef92-8d6e-7fbd-dcdffc914833.share.connect.posit.cloud You can tell me what you want (within reason) and I'll do it. Alternatively, you can make a PR on my repo github.com/Dpananos/chi...