sandr059

The title of this post is from one of my favourite statistical thinkers (don’t judge me!), Jacob Cohen 1 , in an article arguing that the logic of statistical hypothesis testing (the p<0.05 bit) simply doesn’t fit many important research questions, and that making a fetish of statistical hypothesis testing may actually impede sensible research that can make a useful difference to the world. “Consider the following: A colleague approaches me with a statistical problem. He believes that a generally rare disease does not exist at all in a given population, hence H 0 : P=0. He draws a more or less random sample of 30 cases from this population and finds that one of the cases has the disease, hence P s =1/30=.033. He is not sure how to test H 0 , chi-square with Yates’s (1951) correction or the Fisher exact test, and wonders whether he has enough power. Would you believe it? And would you believe that if he tried to publish this result without a significance test, one or more reviewers m...

In my ‘Return of the Chunky Ninjas’ blogpost ( http://chrishatton.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/return-of-chunky-ninjas.html ) a couple of weeks ago, I suggested the following: Rather than having block contracts for big service providers, why not have guaranteed 10-year amounts for people’s IPCs (people could return some of their IPC if they thought it was too much, and there would be the option for the amount of the IPC to increase if necessary). The money always follows the person. It got a bit lost in subsequent Twitter discussions, except for @neilmcrowther who commented  “imagine could make huge difference if someone got that age 14-24” To be honest, I was a bit embarrassed that this thought had occurred to me some 20 years later than it should have done. But again, as @neilmcrowther commented “cos something that should be so intuitive runs completely counter to common custom?” So, this is a quick blogpost to highlight this idea and hopefully get some discussion on it. Why do I think...

This is kind of prompted by a passionate blogpost from @ProfRHastings “Challenging behaviour and learning disability in the UK – the three options” (available here http://profhastings.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/challenging-behaviour-and-learning.html?m=1 ). This post clearly outlines some points of agreement on the major issues concerning the (mis)treatment of people with challenging behaviour. He calls for a systemic, comprehensive approach to change rather than a piecemeal focus on any particular element of this dysfunctional system, which on its own will be doomed to failure. The three options in the title of the blog are really two; to write another report restating what we already know; or to follow through on well-elaborated ideas from Richard and others for a challenging behaviour academy for England. His third option is really a challenge, to go on if you think you can come up with something better. As I'm someone who has been on a protracted whingeathon about recent policy con...