One of things we have stressed in class lately is the importance of peer viewing other's papers. We have spoke to its benefits and have been able to find many problems with data analysis with only using simple statistical methods. Mistakes and cover ups appear to be quite common in published papers.
The problem is finding the raw data to redo analysis. Most papers published, on the web at least, are in their polished and concise form and do not contain data files. We simply get a nice and neat summary table that highlights the results that ultimately support the researchers' hypothesis. While this is not inherently bad and is VERY pervasive, it does limit other people's chance to check your work.
The transparency we crave is lost, and the more cynical readers will start to question your results and potentially your motives for not providing the data. That being said, most good researchers will gladly provide one with the necessary data files if asked, but this may take longer than one has time for.
What I propose is requiring data files, or at least links to those data files, to be readily available to the viewer. We are in an information age, let's live up to those expectations.
You make an excellent point Kathleen. Even in our first assignment for the class there was a serious lack of data to utilize for analysis. For this assignment I had the exact same problem. The CONSORT statement had asked media outlets to link article references directly to abstracts or to full text if necessary; however, within these, with the advent of communications technology, it would seem that full data tables would not be that difficult to include.
ReplyDeleteKathleen,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you that there is often a lack of transparency in certain statistical analyses. What is more frustrating about this to me is that a person would have to take the initiative to contact the researcher in order to receive the "raw data". Because this takes so much time and effort, few people are likely to actually do it. The overall lack of transparency makes it difficult to be a skeptical consumer of information.