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Got Statistical Literacy? What health statistics mean to you and your patients!

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=knowing-your-chances

Please read the above article about health statistics. This is a very reader friendly article that clearly outlines such concepts in medical literature as absolute vs. relative risk, etc... Very insightful and a must read for anyone who plans on doing research or anyone who plans on reading anything regarding health...or anyone who reads...um, yeah...read it! Here are the key concepts of the article that I have copied here:

Key Concepts

Statistical illiteracy is rooted not in intellectual deficits but in the doctor-patient relationship, the illusion of certainty in medicine, and the practice of presenting health information in opaque forms that erroneously suggest big benefits and small harms from interventions.

Without understanding the numbers, citizens are susceptible to political and commercial manipulation of their anxieties and hopes. The result can be serious damage to physical health and emotional well-being.

People need to understand the difference between absolute and relative risks and how to use natural frequencies to infer the true chances of disease from a positive test result. Individuals also should know to trust mortality rates over five-year survival statistics when evaluating screening tests.

To boost statistical literacy, we also recommend introducing young children to statistical thinking and teaching statistics in school as a way of solving real-world predicaments rather than as a purely mathematical discipline.

It is astounding to me how many people throw around health stats without a clear understanding of what those stats actually mean in terms of REAL risk. Lets get smart- statistical literacy is a must for all healthcare practitioners and sadly most are lacking the appropriate critical skills to wade through the information that is fed to us.

Another good source of information is a website called HealthNewsReview.Org. They collect all the latest medical news and critique based on appropriate language, inherent bias, statistical accuracy as it relates to context (absolute vs. relative risk), etc...etc...

Check it out.

Tags: got, literacy?, statistical

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Comment by Amy Shouse on April 9, 2009 at 11:43am: thanks Chris! I just discovered the healthnewsreview.org site. I was very happy to discover this resource-something to help a critical mind wade through the hype!

Comment by Chris Kresser on April 7, 2009 at 2:31pm: Check out this list of what journalists (and I would add medical professionals and anyone interested in health research) should know about health news stories, from the HealthNewsReview site. I highly recommend checking this out if you're new to medical research.

Comment by Chris Kresser on April 7, 2009 at 2:22pm: Thanks for posting this, Amy. I'm glad we have a required research methodology course in our curriculum. As students of medicine we need to know how to evaluate a study and determine whether the conclusion is valid. There are so many ways to lie with statistics, either consciously or due to poor study design.

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