WHAT IS STATS?
We Want
People to think about the number behind the news
We Look
At major issues and news stories from a quantitative and scientific perspective
We Help
Journalists think quantitatively through education, workshops and direct assistance with data analysis
We Offer
Fellowships to journalists to pursue innovative and in-depth analysis of major issues
We Are
Non-partisan and non-profit; we advocate scientific and statistical methods as the best way of analyzing and solving society's problems. We are a sister organization of the Center for Media and Public Affairs - "America's preeminent news analysts"
STATS INVESTIGATES
Got milk? Not anymore if schools have anything to do with it.
Trevor Butterworth, August 30, 2010
First we stop the kids drinking whole milk because it’s fattening; then when they switch to chocolate milk, we ban it because it’s sugary!
If you take Viagra, will you get an STD?
Rebecca Goldin Ph.D and & Jing Peng, August 2, 2010
Media coverage reveals a classic confusion between causation and correlation, as they implied that Viagra results in greater risk for older men. But if anything, the study suggested just the opposite: Men who are interested in Viagra have riskier sex lives.
Mediterranean diet and heart disease
Rebecca Goldin Ph.D and & Jing Peng, July 7, 2010
Benefits of moderate alcohol consumption go unreported, but failure to note collinearity leads news organizations to misstate study’s findings.
Air pollution and heart attack
Rebecca Goldin Ph.D and & Jing Peng, July 1, 2010
Is air pollution a significant risk factor for heart attacks? We look at a new study.
Are short people at greater risk of heart attack than tall people?
Rebecca Goldin Ph.D and & Jing Peng, June 28, 2010
A slew of studies about risks to your heart hit the news over the past couple of weeks: You’re at higher risk of cardiovascular disease if you are short, if you live in a polluted area or if you eat a diet low on the Mediterranean scale, and folic acid is not going to help a whit. Did the media capture what these studies really said? Over the course of this week we’ll be looking at each of these studies in depth and how the media covered the findings.
RECENT ANALYSIS
Science minus women equals biology?
Rebecca Goldin, Ph.D, June 15, 2010
What's in those veggies?
Rebecca Goldin Ph.D. & Jing Peng, June 4, 2010
Is childhood cancer becoming more common?
Trevor Butterworth, May 28, 2010
Minority Report: Did the President’s Cancer Panel abandon science for scientific politics
Trevor Butterworth, May 13, 2010
ABC News discovers digestion
Trevor Butterworth, May 20, 2010
Click here to see the BPA archive.
Main Archive
STATS BLOG
Sleigh bumps
(August 25, 2010)
Vital Statistics
(August 18, 2010)
Attractive women at disadvantage for unattractive jobs, study says
(August 10, 2010)
Red or dead?
(August 4, 2010)
Make me sick in the ball park
(July 27, 2010)
Inside baseball’s injuries
(July 23, 2010)
Survey finds one-third of doctors do not report incompetent colleagues
(July 16, 2010)
Drivers most likely at fault in Toyota car scare says Gov investigation
(July 15, 2010)
Vital Statistics
(July 7, 2010)
Read more blog items
STATS IN THE NEWS
Was Jet Blue Slide Incident Caused by Head Injury?
Maia Szalavitz on Time.com
(August 13, 2010)The Reign Of The Ban
Trevor Butterworth on Forbes.com
(August 4, 2010)Friends (and Family) Are the Best Medicine
Maia Szalavitz on Psychology Today
(July 28, 2010)The Internet's Long Memory and Empathy
Maia Szalavitz on Psychology Today
(July 26, 2010)Does Teen Drug Rehab Cure Addiction or Create It?
Maia Szalavitz on Time.com
(July 16, 2010)Obesity in America 2010
Maia Szalavitz on MSN Health.
(July 9, 2010)Empathy and the Internet
Maia Szalavitz in the Huffington Post.
(June 29, 2010)The Openness Elixir
Wall Street Journal- Trevor Butterworth reviews the book Wrong by David H. Freeman
(June 19, 2010)Antidepressants: Are They Effective or Just a Placebo?
Maia Szalavitz on Time.com
(June 3, 2010)
A fellow at STATS since 2004, Szalavitz writes about health, science and public policy. She is co-author, with leading child trauma expert Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love and Healing (Basic, 2007) among other books.
Her new book Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential--and Endangered is out now.
A groundbreaking study conducted by STATS and The Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University shows how experts view the risks of common chemicals - and that the media are overstating risk.
You can view the Media Monitor, Toxicologists' Opinions on Chemical Risk and Media Coverage, here.
Plus check out Science suppressed: How America became obsessed with BPA
on the web, or download a PDF of the full report here
Hosted by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
STATS editor Trevor Butterworth participated in a panel, Politics of BPA, at The Science and Policy of BPA conference. At this event, policy experts and scientists engaged in a nonpartisan dialogue about the benefits and risks of BPA.
Video of this event is available here.
Underage drinking is a serious problem for our society. From reports in the media, one gets the impression that it is getting worse ever year and that even casual teenage drinking carries with it devastating implications for our youth, including increasing the alcoholism rate of those who drink early and even death. Do the statistics support these stories?
Plus, The do's and don'ts of kicking addiction and treating alcoholism.
Watch STATS Director of Research, Rebecca Goldin Ph.D, lecture on how the media miss the mark in the use and presentation of statistics The talk was given as part of the Mathematical Association of America's Distinguished Lecture Series in Washington DC on October 28. 2008
Climate scientists agree on warming, disagree on dangers, and don’t trust the media’s coverage of climate change
S. Robert Lichter, Ph.D,
April 24, 2008
STATS experts analyze the everyday concerns of parenting.
Land of the free, home of the scared: An interview with Lenore Skenazy
Honoring some of the worst abuses of statistics and science in the past year.
Plus, The worst survey of the year, and whether "Pixie dust" can regrow severed flesh.
