Significant medical data

How some scientists – and news – can play with medical data…

How Scientists Are Doing A Bait-And-Switch With Medical Data

A scientific result is considered “statistically significant” if there’s a less than one in 20 chance that it could happen by chance – if you measure 20 different things, you’ll probably get one positive result, as this XKCD demonstrates.

Sources
  • Image: Significant, xkcd webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
  • How Scientists Are Doing A Bait-And-Switch With Medical Data, BuzzFeed, Jan. 22, 2016.
  • Enjoy our health comic strips album on Flickr.
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