NPR did a series of stories exposing research that the U.S. government conducted during WWII. This research exposed American soldiers to mustard gas for research purposes. In some instances, the government targeted soldiers of color, believing that they had tougher/different skin that would make them more resistant to this form of chemical warfare. Here is the  whole series of stories  (from the  original research, exposed via Freedom of Information Act , to  NPR working to find the effected veterans ). None of the soldiers ever received any special dispensation or medical care due to their involvement. Participants were not given the choice to discontinue participation without prejudice, as recalled below by one of the surviving veterans: "We weren't told what it was," says Charlie Cavell, who was 19 when he volunteered for the program in exchange for two weeks' vacation. "Until we actually got into the process of being in that room and realized, wait a m...

This obituary for Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey that tells an important story about research ethics, pharmaceutical industries, and the importance of government oversight in the drug creation process ( .pdf here ). Dr. Kelsey, receiving the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service (highest honor given to federal employees) Dr.  Kelsey was one of the first officials in the United States to notice (via data!) and raise concerns about thalidomide , the now infamous anti-nausea drug that causes terrible birth defects when administered to pregnant women. The drug was already being widely used throughout Europe, Canada, and the Middle East to treat morning sickness, but Dr. Kelsey refused to approve the drug for widespread use in the US (despite persistent efforts of Big Pharm to push the drug into the US market). Time proved Dr. Oldham Kelsey correct (clinical trials in the US went very poorly), and her persistence, data analysis, and ethics helped to limit the ...

I often share news stories that illustrate easy-to-follow, engaging research that appeals to undergraduates. For the first time, I'm also providing a mini data set that 1) mimics the original findings and 2) provides an example of ANOVA. This story by Patty Neighmond , reporting for NPR, describes a  study  investigating the role of music in pain reduction. The study used three groups of kids, all recovering from surgery. The kids either 1) listened to music, 2) listened to an audio books, or 3) sat with noise-cancelling ear phones for 30 minutes. The researchers found that kids in both the music and audio book experienced pain reduction levels comparable to over-the-counter pain medication while the control group enjoyed no such benefits. And the research used the 10-point FACES scale, allowing for a side discussion about how we collect data from humans who don't have the best vocabularies or limited communication skills. This study can also be used as a way t...

For those who teach statistics, research methods, and psychology major advisers. Some of these have been posted before. Some of these have not. I created all of them except for the first one. Additionally, I created a bunch of Psychology Advising memes as I am currently editing the "Advising" portion of my rank and tenure application.

Once again, Kristopher Magnusson has combined is computer programming and statistical knowledge to help illustrate statistical concepts . His latest  interactive tool allows students to view the t-curve for different degrees for freedom. Additionally, students can view error rates associated with different degrees of freedom. Note that the critical region is one-tailed with alpha set at .05. If you cursor around the critical region, you can set the alpha to .025 to better illustrate a two-tailed test (in terms of the critical region at which we declare significance).  Error rates when n < 30 Error rates when n > 30 This isn't the first time Kristopher's interactive tools have been featured on this blog! He has also created websites dedicated to explaining effect size , correlation , and other statistical concepts .

I think that it is so, so important to introduce statistics students to the big picture of how data is used in their every day lives. Even with all of the material that we are charged with covering in introduction to statistics, I think it is still important to touch on topics like Big Data and Data Mining in order to emphasize to our students how ubiquitous statistics are in our lives.  In my honors section, I assign multiple readings (news stories, TED talks, NPR stories) prior to a day of discussion devoted to this topic. In my non-honors sections of statistics and my online sections, I've used electronic discussion boards to introduce the topic via news stories. I also have a manuscript in press that describes a way to introduce very basic data mining techniques in the Introduction to Statistics classroom. That's why I think this NPR news story is worth sharing. Shahani describes and provides data (from Pew) to argue that Americans are worried about the security of...