Misleading statistics within criminal trials

Unit in Criminal Statistics

"Lies, damned lies and criminal statistics": reinterpreting the criminal statistics in England and Wales.

Misleading statistics: errors in textbooks, software and manuals.

Statistics is an essential tool in medicine in general and in medical research in particular. This is shown by the large number of articles on statistical topics carried by medical journals, by the demand for consultancy from medical statisticians and by the number of textbooks in medical statistics, especially introductory texts, now on the market. Yet, despite this importance and wealth of ad...

Rebuttal to editorial saying cancer survival statistics are misleading.

In this rebuttal letter byMichel P Coleman and colleagues (BMJ 2011;343:d4214, doi:10.1136/bmj.d4214), the authors quote from Beral and Peto’s original editorial (BMJ 2010;341:c4112, doi:10.1136/bmj.c4112). In the full text, online version of their letter, the italic emphasis that Coleman and colleagues had added to certain parts of this quotation was lost (because the whole quotation was publi...

Recent clinical trials: the good, the bad, and the misleading.

Results of 3 major clinical trials on the treatment of hypertension have been published recently1,2 or presented.3 In addition, the validity of data provided in an often-quoted publication of another trial4 that had a major impact on nephrological practice5 has been seriously questioned.6 First, the good trial, Treatment of Hypertension in Patients 80 Years of Age or Older,1 addressed a major u...