Stats
Meta-analysis talk (May 2, 2005) Category:
Systematic overviews
Today I gave a talk on meta-analysis. I started with a general
overview of meta-analysis, and then discussed some of
the particular problems associated with a
meta-analysis of a diagnostic test.
The discussion was quite lively, and wide-ranging. At one point, we were talking about how
to respond to a bad referee report for a paper you are trying to get published. I mentioned
how it is difficult to argue with a referee although a few times I have had to resort to a
"my referee is an idiot" defense. Most of the time, I just try to go along with what the
referee says unless their suggestions do violence to the statistics.
One of the other people mentioned that he would often cite a paper by Moye published in
2001 in Circulation when arguing with a referee about changing the analysis. It turns out
that I had this paper in my files already. The full citation is
and it discusses the problems with unwarranted changes in a research protocol. I may have
to try this the next time I have to respond to a referee report. Actually, it is usually not
my paper. Most of the time, someone comes to me with a referee report on a paper I have never
seen before and asks for help in responding to the referee's critical comments.
Dr. Moye has also written an excellent book:
-
Statistical Reasoning in Medicine. The Intuitive P-Value Primer. Moye LA (2000) New
York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN: 0387989331.
[BookFinder4U link]
which has a lot of lively and entertaining examples in its pages.
We had a lot of interesting comments during my talk, and I agreed to give another talk on
meta-analysis at a later date. I would just give a non-technical overview based on my
chapter:
in the book I am trying to get published. The link to this
chapter will disappear when the book is published, so please do not bookmark it.
07/08/2008.
