Statistical flaws revealed in top journals' papers

[Monique]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995051"

Two of the world's top scientific journals, Nature and the British Medical Journal, have been found guilty of routinely publishing figures that do not add up.

The evidence comes from Spanish researchers who found a surprisingly large number of statistical errors in the two journals. They warn that the same may well be true of other mainstream journals.

The analysis revealed that at least one error appeared in 38 per cent of the Nature papers and 25 per cent of the BMJ papers looked at. Furthermore, the study estimates that four per cent of results reported to be statistically "significant" may not be significant after all.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995051"

Rounding numbers seems to be a difficult task for some..

 

[selfAdjoint]

I am not surprised. Statistics and probability seem to be reduced to folklore theorems and rules of thumb even in branches of quantitative science.

 

[London Kngiths]

Well that isn't very encouraging. Then again I have witnessed papers get rejected from other journals where the editor had requested "additional information" that was in the paper already.