Blogs

In a careful study published last week, Socioeconomic position and the risk of brain tumour: a Swedish national population-based cohort study, the authors examined the association between the socio-economic status of men and women in Sweden with diagnosis of brain tumours over 18 years. One of the main findings is shown below.

Remember all those autism stories over the last few weeks? You don’t? There’s a reason for that.

On Thursday November 19th the printed version of the Guardian had the headline “Experts dispute Hunt's claim on weekend hospital treatment“ [online version here]. But it was not only Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt who gave a misleading statement – the Guardian also made a serious error about statistics.

Surgeons are increasingly subject to statistical monitoring, and named results may be made publicly available. But consider a surgeon in a low-risk specialty who has had a successful and blameless career, until a combination of circumstances, possibly beyond their control, contribute to a single patient dying. They then find they are officially labeled as an ‘outlier’ and subject to formal investigation, all because of a purely statistical criterion. Is this fair?