Masthead
Editor
Trevor Butterworth
Sense About Science USA
Director STATS.org
Rebecca Goldin Ph.D
George Mason University
Associate Editor
Ronald Wasserstein Ph.D
American Statistical Association
Advisory Board
Andrew Bray Ph.D
Assistant Professor, Mt. Holyoke
Giles Hooker Ph.D
Associate Professor, Cornell University
Michael Lavine Ph.D
Professor, UMass Amherst
Patrick McKnight Ph.D
Associate Professor, George Mason University
Regina Nuzzo Ph.D
Associate Professor, Gallaudet University
Kristin Sainini
Associate Professor, Stanford University
President Emeritus
Robert S. Lichter Ph.D
George Mason University
Address
Sense About Science USA
68 Dean Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Email: editor@senseaboutscienceusa.org
American Statistical Association
Alexandria, VA 22314-1943
Phone: (703) 684-1221
Toll-free: (888) 231-3473
Fax: (703) 684-2037
Email: asainfo@amstat.org
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: there are lies, damned lies, and…
STATS began life in 1993 as an attempt to point out that statistical knowledge was essential to understanding the world; and as we relied on the news media for so much knowledge about the world, it was vital that journalists understood how to interpret statistics and report them accurately. Hence, the name of our newsletter: VitalStats.
Scroll forward to 2004 and STATS had become an affiliate of George Mason University; the newsletter had become a website, STATS.org. Several other things had changed too: how could we expect journalists to report statistics accurately when it was increasingly clear that scientists and researchers were themselves getting them wrong? Scientists were increasingly questioning the rigor of scientific research—experimental design, statistical reporting, reproducibility and research integrity. And they did so right at the moment when the world seemed to be taking a “quantitative leap” forward into prosperity without end.
That this turned out to be a financial leap backward in 2008 showed how numbers, like the waxen wings of Icarus, could melt and fall apart. We all had faith in numbers, but did we understand what they meant?
Now, everything is becoming a data point, and everything is becoming searchable and analyzable. Instead of hypotheses seeking data, billions of data points seek hypotheses. As we once looked to the stars, we now look to databases to reveal new truths about the universe and our place within it.
Statistics is the only way to hold this new empiricism accountable; statistics is—in our information age—the new journalism. Which is, presently, a problem. If you are a statistician you are unlikely to engage in journalism in a serious way, and if you are a journalist you are unlikely to engage in statistics in a serious way.
The logic of the situation says collaborate—and here we are, with the third incarnation of STATS, as a collaboration between the American Statistical Association and the non partisan, non profit Sense About Science USA. We aim to scale the basics, to provide guidance and practical help, and to ascend to more complex problems in analysis and research integrity (if you want more of our thoughts on journalism and statistics and what we believe, click here).
A note on funding: STATS.org is run by Sense About Science USA; it is funded by a grant from the Searle Freedom Trust and a donation from the American Statistical Association. Sense About Science USA does not accept industry funding or support.
