If you ever attended even the most basic statistics class, you have been warned about data manipulation. Even more so,if somebody mentions data manipulation and statistics, your mind inevitably leads you to the media. Reporting on scientific results derived from statistics, reporters often omit the warnings and precautions the authors themselves expressed on any far-reaching conclusions based on their results. But a cautious, scientifically sound conclusion does not cut it as a headline. Despite this being a serious issue, especially for psychologists, what better way to illustrate it than with a joke?
Source: xkcd
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Ivan Flis is a graduate student of psychology at the Center for Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of European Psychology Students (JEPS) and the Chair of the Right to Research Coalition Coordinating Committee for Africa, Europe and Middle East.
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Sina Scherer
on Jul 6th, 2011
@ 5:02 pm:
Very interesting post. In a wider context the following post seems interesting as well! Check it out:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=in-defense-of-wishful-thinking-2011-07-05
Maris Vainre
on Jul 7th, 2011
@ 7:32 pm:
Also, PhD comics has point out the problem of data interpretation:
‘The Science News Cycle’: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174
‘Dear News Media, When Reporting Poll Results..’: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1271