{"id":9334,"date":"2016-08-11T06:55:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T06:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=9334"},"modified":"2016-08-11T11:30:18","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T11:30:18","slug":"rehmeyer-makes-statisticians-jaws-drop-over-pace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/rehmeyer-makes-statisticians-jaws-drop-over-pace\/","title":{"rendered":"Rehmeyer makes statisticians\u2019 ‘jaws drop’ over PACE"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEAction<\/strong> blog post by\u00a0Alex Anderssen, 8 August 2016: Rehmeyer makes statisticians\u2019 ‘jaws drop’ over PACE<\/a><\/p>\n

Science writer\u00a0Julie Rehmeyer<\/a>\u00a0presented a critique of\u00a0the PACE trial <\/a>to North America\u2019s largest gathering of statisticians in Chicago earlier this week.<\/p>\n

\"Julie<\/p>\n

Her talk was titled, \u201cBad Statistics, Bad Reporting, Bad Impact on Patients: The Story of the PACE trial\u201d. Rehmeyer explained to the 200-strong audience some of the problems with the trial, including the changes to the originally planned analyses of recovery rates. She showed how, with the new analyses, patients\u2019 physical function could worsen and fall below the level required to enter the trial, and yet they would be considered to be recovered.<\/p>\n

Rehmeyer said, \u201cWhen I went through the slides showing the changes to the physical function criterion for recovery, I saw jaws drop.\u201d<\/p>\n

PACE was, she told the audience, \u201cone of the most damaging cases of bad statistical practice that I have personally encountered in my years as a journalist.\u201d It was, she said, an \u201cobject lesson in how our systems can break down. In this case there were serious breakdowns statistically, scientifically, journalistically, and in public health.\u201d She added that patients were \u201cbeing hurt by it to this day\u201d.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Chicago conference<\/a>\u00a0was held jointly with the International Statistical Institute and major national statistical associations such as the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the UK\u2019s Royal Statistical Society. Before the talk, the ASA\u00a0urged delegates\u00a0to attend Rehmeyer\u2019s talk and hear \u201chow bad statistics harm patients and our profession\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rehmeyer said, \u201cI was delighted by the response of the audience\u2026. Quite a few people came and talked to me afterward, including a couple of folks with genuine influence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rehmeyer is a contributing editor with Discover magazine and has written previously on ME\/CFS in the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0and\u00a0Slate.<\/p>\n

The slides of her talk<\/a> can be found\u00a0here; her speaking notes maybe be viewed by clicking the \u201cNotes\u201d icon just above the comments section. The abstract of her talk is\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another report of the talk, by Cort Johnson, 7 Aug 2016: PACE Trial blasted at Statistician’s Conference by award winning journalist<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MEAction blog post by\u00a0Alex Anderssen, 8 August 2016: Rehmeyer makes statisticians\u2019 ‘jaws drop’ over PACE Science writer\u00a0Julie Rehmeyer\u00a0presented a critique of\u00a0the PACE trial to North America\u2019s largest gathering of statisticians in Chicago earlier this week. Her talk was titled, \u201cBad … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3003,618,2326,2156,310,3002],"class_list":["post-9334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-alex-anderssen","tag-cort-johnson","tag-julie-rehmeyer","tag-meaction","tag-pace-trial","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-2qy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9334"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9364,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9334\/revisions\/9364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}