(This article was originally published at Big Data, Plainly Spoken (aka Numbers Rule Your World), and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)
In the first two chapters of Numbersense, I discuss how people game statistics, and why gaming is inevitable. I have also written about the placebo effect before. Another article has appeared covering the same topic -- the industry doesn't like the fact that more and more drugs fail to clear the "placebo" hurdle; and the industry thinks the problem is that the placebo effect is mysteriously increasing over time.
What is new in that BBC News item is the extensive conversations with people who run clinical trials. They reveal a variety of tricks they use to game the numbers.
Read our latest Statbusters column in the Daily Beast here.
Please comment on the article here: Big Data, Plainly Spoken (aka Numbers Rule Your World)
