NPR, as part of their series about discrimination in America , talked about how it is difficult to obtain a diverse research sample when your diverse research sample doesn't trust scientists. This story by Rob Stein is about public outreach attempts in order to gather a representative sample for a large scale genetic research study. The story is also about how historical occurrences of research violations live on in the memory of the affected communities. The National Institutes for Health is trying to collect a robust, diverse sampling of Americans as part of the All of Us initiative. NIH wants to build a giant, representative database of Americans and information about their health and genetics. As of the air date for this story, African Americans were underepresented in the sample, and the reason behind this is historical. Due to terrible violation of African American research participant rights (Tuskeegee, Henrietta Lacks), many African Americans are unwilling to partic...

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 ...

Alright. This teaching idea is pretty involved. It is bigger than any one instructor and requires interdepartmental effort as well as support from The Powers that Be at your university. The U.S. Holocaust Museum hosts a number of  traveling exhibits . One in particular, " Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race ", provides a great opportunity for the discussions of research ethics, the protection and treatment of human research subjects, and how science can be used to justify really horrible things. I am extraordinarily fortunate that Gannon University's Department of History (with assistance from our Honors program as well as College of the Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences) has worked hard to get this exhibit to our institution during the Fall 2015 semester. It is housed in our library through the end of October. How I used it in my class: My Honors Psychological Statistics class visited the exhibit prior to a discussion day about research ethics. In...

http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-finds-those-with-deceased-family-members-at,38463/ Man, I love the fact that when The Onion does an article about pretend research , they don't skimp on the details. This story includes the journal (NEJM), n -size (85,000), research design (longitudinal), a lead author, covariates (race, nationality, etc.) as well as a replication study. I like to think that the person who writes these articles paid really close attention in a statistics class or a research methods class and remembers just enough to be a smart ass about the research process. From the article: I used this just last week as a review example of correlation =/= causation. The students liked it. Mission accomplished.