Many of my students love a good manicure.  Sometimes, they come in with full-on talons.  The youth love manicures.  As such, the recent viral headlines about gel nail polish lamps and cancer matter to them.  #scicomm But what did the original research really study? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-35876-8#Sec12 (CHECK OUT THIS GREAT RM IMAGE FROM THE ORIGINAL RESEARCH!!!) This  short NPR story by Rachel Treisman  is a great summary. The NPR audio story is accompanied by a written report. In that report, Treisman succinctly summarizes the methodology: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1151332361/gel-nails-cancer-manicure-safe 1. Let's talk about science communication. The NPR story is accurate science reporting. However, most of the headlines don't mention that a) some of the evidence came from mice cells, and they measured cell mutations but not cancer.  2. Let's talk about factorial ANOVA The researchers used a 3 (cell types: human 1, hu...

This article from The Economist, " Data from wearable devices are changing disease surveillance and medical research ," has a home in your stats or RM class. It describes how FitBits and Apple Watches can be used to collect baseline medical data for health research. I like it because it is very accessible but still goes into detail about specific research issues related to this kind of data: -How does one operationalize their outcome variable? Pulse, temperature, etc., as proxies for underlying problems. Changes in heart rates have predicted the onset of COVID and the flu.  -Big samples be good! One of the reasons this data works like it does is because it is harvested from a massive number of people using these devices.  -The article gives examples of well-designed experiments that use wearable technology. However, often with massive data collection via tech, the data drives the hypothesis, not the other way around. In our psychology classes, we discuss NHST and the proper w...

Emily Watson, writing for NPR, describes medical research by Ogilvie, vanNiekerk, & Krajden . This research provides a timely, topical example of false positives, false negatives, medical research, and gets your students thinking a bit more flexibly about measurement. This research provides valuable information about debate in medicine: What method of cervical cancer detection is most accurate: The traditional Pap smear, or an HPV screening? The Pap smear works by scraping cells off of a cervix and having a human view and detect abnormal cervical cancer cells. The HPV test, indeed, detects HPV. Since HPV causes 99% of cervical cancers, its presence signals a clinician to perform further screen, usually a colonoscopy. The findings: Women over 30 benefit more from the HPV test. How to use this example in class: - This is a great example of easy-to-follow  research methodology and efficacy testing in medicine. A question existed: Which is better, Pap or HPV test? The questi...

This NPR story discusses research  detective work published JAMA . The JAMA article looked at a very influential NEJM review article that investigated the link between diet and Coronary Heart Disease. Specifically, whether sugar or fat contribute more to CHD. The article, written by Harvard researchers decades ago, pinned CHD on fatty diets. But the researchers took money from Big Sugar (which sounds like...a drag queen or CB handle) and communicated with Big Sugar while writing the review article. This piece discusses how conflict of interest shaped food research and our beliefs about the causes of CHD for decades. And how conflict of interest and institutional/journal prestige shaped this narrative. It also touches on how industry, namely sugar interests, discounted research that finds a sugar:CHD link while promoting and funding research that finds a fat:CHD link. How to use in a Research Methods class: -Conflict of interest. The funding received by the researchers from th...

In addition to being an astronaut, Scott Kelly is one-half of a pair of twins and a lab rat for NASA researchers studying space travel's effects on the human body. This NPR story details how NASA has been using twin research to learn more about the side-effects of prolonged time in space as the agency prepares to go to Mars. Scott and his twin, Mark (also an astronaut!), have been providing all manner of biodata to researchers. In particular, researchers are interested in the effects of weightlessness and exposure to space radiation on aging. This story provides a good example in class, as you can discuss twin AND longitudinal research. I think you could also use this example to introduce the concept of paired t -tests. UPDATE 2/9/2017: Preliminary research is available if you want to flesh out this example.  MOAR UPDATES 3/3/21: CHECK OUT this PBS documentary featuring the twins! ESPECIALLY useful for a brief class period: This 2-minute clip that describes the twin ...

51% of the babies born in the US are male. Why? For a long time, people just assumed that the skew started at conception. Then Steven Orzack decided to test this assumption. He (and colleagues) collected sex data from abortions, miscarriages, live births (30 million records!), fertility clinics (140,00 embryos!), and different fetal screening tests (90,000 medical records!) to really get at the root of the sex skew/conception assumption. And the assumption didn't hold up: The sex ratio is pretty close to 50:50 at conception. Further analysis of the data found that female fetuses are more likely to be lost during pregnancy. Original research article here . Richard Harris' (reporting for NPR) radio story and interview with Orzack here . Use this story in class as a discussion piece about long held (but never empirically supported) assumptions in the sciences and why we need to conduct research in order to test such assumptions. For example: 1) Discuss the weaknesses of previo...