Stats for the Health Professional

• The Curse of Sports Illustrated Hits Medical Research Andrew Vickers talks about regression to the mean and whether the implication is that medical progress is bunk.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, December 18, 2012
• How Do I Run Barefoot With Shoes On? Dr. Andrew Vickers describes the evidence on whether it's better to run with shoes or without.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, October 19, 2011
• Patients Wait for Cures While Journals Fuss About Font Sizes Using 3 short cases, Dr. Andrew Vickers describes the frustration that some authors face when submitting articles for journal publication.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, August 26, 2011
• Society Introduces Template for Peer Reviewers Uneasy With Stats Dr. Andrew Vickers provides a template for journal editors who wish to assist totally unqualified peer reviewers. Once again, with apologies to The Onion.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, April 26, 2011
• Negative Research Results? There's a Cure With apologies to The Onion, Dr. Andrew Vickers describes a study that confirms the value of hiding studies with negative results in your dresser drawer.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, February 10, 2011
• Lorcaserin -- Rejected by FDA for Being Too Safe? Andrew Vickers educates us on statistics by examining the reasons why the FDA rejected lorcaserin.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, February 08, 2011
• Double Espresso vs Prostate Cancer   Andrew Vickers, Medscape's biostatistician, strolls down Brooklyn sidewalks swigging multiple cups of coffee and asking, "Am I preventing advanced prostate cancer?"
  Medscape Business of Medicine, December 17, 2010
• Dramatic Mammography Development: Radiologist Calls for More Radiology Dr. Andrew Vickers assesses a Swedish study on mammography that showed survival benefits but he questions whether it ends the debate.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, October 14, 2010
• Caution: Quality of Life Studies Can Be Detrimental to Your Quality of Life Dr. Andrew Vickers explains why so many interventions appear to fail at improving quality of life.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, September 28, 2010
• "Home Birth Triples the Neonatal Death Rate": Attention-Grabbing No Doubt, But Uninformative Andrew Vickers explains why equating "relative risk" with "actual risk" is, well, risky.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, September 27, 2010
• Cutoff Points in Medicine -- Why Use Them? If cutoff points are useless in cooking and sports, Andrew Vickers asks, then why use them to treat patients?
  Medscape Business of Medicine, September 03, 2010
• For "Junk Science" Read: "I Don't Like the Results" -- A Statistical Take on the ARBs and Cancer Study Andrew Vickers, MD, uses his statistical knowledge to weigh in on the controversy over the study linking angiotensin-receptor blockers and cancer.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, August 13, 2010
• Top Scientific Papers vs Furry Green Slippers: Which Should You Trust?   Andrew Vickers, PhD, our regular columnist on statistics, walks the streets of Brooklyn, searching for clinically relevant statistics at a tag sale.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, June 09, 2010
• Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grade Scientist? Dr. Andrew Vickers criticizes the lack of replication studies in the published literature.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, March 31, 2010
• To Err Is Human, to Forgive Is Statistical Dr. Andrew Vickers explains why the results of flawed studies don't necessarily need to be discarded.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, March 18, 2010
• Math as Mass Hypnosis In his popular series, Andrew Vickers, PhD, describes the limitations of his statistical craft as reflected by the recent economic downturn, WWII, and immune function.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, January 09, 2010
• Caution: Null Hypothesis Ahead! In his popular series, Andrew Vickers, PhD, discusses the null hypothesis, using surgical infection rates to demonstrate a problem in interpretation.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, December 08, 2009
• Why African American Men Have Poorer Survival From Prostate Cancer (Even When They Don't) What this tells us about multivariable regression.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, November 02, 2009
• Why Mr. Jones Got Surgery Even If He Didn't: Intention-to-Treat Analysis Intention-to-treat may not be perfect, but it is far better than intention-to-cheat.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, August 17, 2009
• How to Create a Nice Graph for a Research Paper How to draw a graph is just about all you need to know for most medical research papers.
  Medscape Business of Medicine, August 10, 2009