Standing Statistics Right Side Up

Editorials15 June 1999Standing Statistics Right Side UpFrank Davidoff, MDFrank Davidoff, MDEditor (Davidoff)Author, Article, and Disclosure Informationhttps://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-130-12-199906150-00022 SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail During the years I taught students about diagnostic reasoning, I would begin by explaining that the sensitivity of a diagnostic test for disease X is found by measuring how often the test result is positive in a population of patients, all of whom are known (by some independent and definitive criterion, the "gold standard") to have disease X: that is, by measuring the frequency of true-positive results in that population. A test that yields positive results in 95 of 100 diseased patients, for example, has a sensitivity of 0.95. We would then talk about test specificity—the likelihood that the same ...References1. Galen RS, Gambino SR. Beyond Normality: The Predictive Value and Efficiency of Medical Diagnoses. New York: Wiley; 1975. Google Scholar2. Goodman SN. Toward evidence-based medical statistics. 1: The P value fallacy. Ann Intern Med. 1999;130:995-1004. LinkGoogle Scholar3. Goodman SN. Toward evidence-based medical statistics. 2: The Bayes factor. Ann Intern Med. 1999;130:1005-13. LinkGoogle Scholar4. Linde K, Clausius N, Ramirez G, Melchart D, Eitel F, Hedges LV, et al . Are the clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials. Lancet. 1997;350:834-43. CrossrefMedlineGoogle Scholar5. Vandenbroucke JP. 175th anniversary lecture. Medical journals and the shaping of medical knowledge. Lancet. 1998;352:2001-6. CrossrefMedlineGoogle Scholar6. Ascherio A, Rimm EB, Hernán MA, Giovannucci E, Kawachi I, Stampfer MJ, et al . Relation of consumption of vitamin E, vitamin C, and carotenoids to risk for stroke among men in the United States. Ann Intern Med. 1999;130:963-70. LinkGoogle Scholar7. Information for authors. Ann Intern Med. 1997; 127:I-15. Google Scholar8. Clarke M, Chalmers I. Discussion sections in reports of controlled trials published in general medical journals: islands in search of continents? JAMA. 1998;280:280-2. CrossrefMedlineGoogle Scholar Author, Article, and Disclosure InformationAffiliations: Editor (Davidoff) PreviousarticleNextarticle Advertisement FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsSee AlsoToward Evidence-Based Medical Statistics. 1: The P Value Fallacy Steven N. Goodman Toward Evidence-Based Medical Statistics. 2: The Bayes Factor Steven N. Goodman Toward Evidence-Based Statistics Jean-Francois Caubet Metrics Cited byAssessments of Conditional and Unconditional Type I Error Probabilities for Bayesian Hypothesis Testing with Historical Data BorrowingPneumonia mortality, comorbidities matter? 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