Stats
I hate bad research examples (April 23, 2008).
Someone wrote in asking if I know of any good examples of research studies
that illustrate problems of making false generalizations. I had to mention my
book, of course,
which has lots of commentary of actual publications, most of which are open
source and freely available on the web. I am way overdue with providing
answers to the exercises, by the way. It has been very busy for me for quite a
while'pretty much for the entire century so far.
For what it's worth, I do have a pedagogical bone to pick. I believe it is
not a good idea to find a 'bad' publication and tear it apart. It encourages
people to view research publications in a dichotomy (good paper/bad paper)
when there are very few articles that are so bad that they are not worth
reading. Similarly, there are very few articles that meet a standard of
perfection that some people seem to apply. I also rebel against the
'checklist' mentality that seems to be rampant in Evidence Based Medicine.
This belief that if you have blinding, randomization, and intention to treat,
you are home free is a dangerously simplistic approach. Although I hate the
word, I believe you have to take a holistic approach to a research
publication. Take a look at the paper as a whole with all its bright points
and all its flaws. Do the bright points sufficiently outweigh the flaws to
make the research sufficiently persuasive?
So I would encourage anyone wanting to teach about how to interpret the
literature not to take a paper that has led to false generalizations. Just
take a real paper and discuss its strengths and weaknesses as a whole.
2008-07-14. Category: Teaching resources
