Wednesday, January 09, 2013

What's Statophobia ?

A fascinating condition that most doctor's suffer from, as explained in this excellent email from Dr Ronald E LaPorte
Supercourse Newsletter
6 January 2013


Dear Friends

Stataphobia:

Stataphobia is a devastating disease which primarily afflicts scientists
world wide. It renders scientists unresponsive,  rejects their articles
and prevents  tenure. With the   Library of Alexandria we plan to cure
this horrible malady.  Please forward this to your friends and students
who now, or in the future will suffer from this debilitating disease.

Stataphobia is defined as a rapidly progressive disorder of scientists
caused by statistical ignorance and fear

Virtually all scientists across the world suffer from this.   I am a
Stataphobic.  Of the 500 articles I have published  in 300 my research
design and statistics were questioned  Almost every Nobel Prize winner,
professor, academic has had this disease. Darwin, Copernicus, and Einstein
had bouts of severe stataphobia. Stataphobia is the primary risk factor
for the death of scientific articles  and NIH Grants, it must be stopped

But every now and then I feel so insecure,
I know that I just need you like, I've never done before.( Beatles)

All of us in research  have symptoms of design insecurity  and need
research methods experts in oh so many ways  .  I am fortunate as 4 floors
down are friends in statistics. However, in research limited universities
and countries around the world, the only research expert might be half a
country away, a major determinant of Stataphobia.

The Cure to Stataphobia:  BA Superhelp desk

Help me get my feet back on the ground,
Won't you please, please help me? (to plan and analyze my research???)
(Beatles and me)

To prevent Stataphobia, every scientist should have your own virtual
research counselor.  A sure way to cure Stataphoia is to provide
counselors to show the irrationality of our fear of Stats.  This will lead
to enormous psychological improvement and better publications. The Library
of Alexandria SuperHelp desk will boost scientific productivity by giving
every scientist a virtual research methods counselor, and will help
prevent the global epidemic of Stataphobia.

Only 3% of the articles in international journals come from developing
countries, despite the fact that 25% of the researchers are from
developing countries and 80% of the people.  As we have indicated, over
80% of the time articles are rejected it is because of research methods
problems.  The reality is that no matter how good one’s hypothesis is from
any place in the world an article will never be published unless the
research methods are adequate. The BA SuperHelp desk can help stamp out
this ugly disease.

The BA SuperHelp virtual desk  will provide all of you a research methods
hotline.  Over 20 gray/no hair research experts have banded together to
help provide advice.  We will need other experts such as those having a
significant publication record, or statistical training please join the
Stataphobia vaccination team. We decided to start our effort in the
bastion of civilization, Egypt, and set up the help desk for researchers
in Egypt to see how it will work in February. In Egypt we of course have
the Library of Alexandria leading the effort. We have a research expert,
Eman Eltahlawy who has taken the lead.  We will see how our efforts work
in Egypt and then expand to other countries once we see the flow of
questions.

The door to the prevention of Stataphobia:

Our door consists of 12 areas where there are likely going to be
questions, e.g. bias, power calculation, sampling, etc. We have a
Supercourse lecture and a wiki explanation.

It must be fate as the “ Door to Research methods” = LaPorte 2 RESRCH

This trial period is designed to provide us an idea as to how much traffic
we will receive.
From Euclid to BA SuperHelp desk

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