Monday, October 15, 2012

Breaking news: space-jumping safety study



Making a good impression with headlines based on tiny preliminary studies? Too easy!

Other ways to fall into traps about exaggerated research findings: reports of laboratory or animal studies that don't mention their limitations, studies with no comparison group, conference presentations with inadequate data reports. These were some of the key points made by Steve Woloshin at the first full day of NIH's Medicine in the Media course, happening now in Potomac near Washington DC.

Read more here if you want to know more about the pitfalls of small study size and how to know if a study was big enough to be meaningful.

Update 31 July 2016: And now there's jumping from a plane without a parachute.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds 100% to me.. jumping from space is totally safe, even without a parachute

    ReplyDelete