Suspicious supervisors and suspect surveys

Public opinion polls are ubiquitous in rich countries, especially during elections. Such polls estimate general support levels for political candidates based on the strength of their support within a small sample of that population. The classical ideal for building...

Online Dating and the Statistical Dark Arts

One of the darkest statistical arts lies in choosing the model to use when analyzing your experimental data. A statistical model both represents your understanding of the experiment and enables you to test the strength of evidence supporting your conclusions. You can...

Can Selfies Save Nutrition Science?

  Hundreds, possibly thousands of health studies may be wrong because researchers ignored human fallibility   You may have never heard of the Energy Balance Working Group, but this collection of 45 experts on nutrition, exercise, biochemistry, and other...

Food Addiction: Is it All in Someone Else’s Head?

  Are you a food addict? A major review of all the evidence by a consortium of European universities, which was funded by the European Union, concluded that the evidence that specific foods could trigger addiction was “poor;” but that the act of...