Statistical mistake

BACKGROUND: We are obliged to give babies the chance to profit from a nationwide screening of developmental dysplasia of the hip in very rural areas of Mongolia, where trained physicians are scarce. This study aimed to compare the quality and interpretation of hip ultrasound screening examinations performed by nurses and junior physicians. METHODS: A group of 6 nurses and 6 junior physician volunteers with no previous ultrasound experience underwent Graf's standard training in hands-on practice...

Experimental water research lacks clear methodology to estimate experimental error. Especially when natural waters are involved, the characterization tools bear method-specific artifacts while the varying environmental conditions prevent regular repeats. This tutorial review evaluates current practice and identifies common mistakes to propose a practical procedure to determine experimental errors at the example of membrane filtration. Statistical analysis is often applied to an insufficient number of repeated measurements, while not all error sources and contributions are considered...

Kuiper's statistic is a good measure for the difference of ideal distribution and empirical distribution in the goodness-of-fit test. However, it is a challenging problem to solve the critical value and upper tail quantile, or simply Kuiper pair, of Kuiper's statistics due to the difficulties of solving the nonlinear equation and reasonable approximation of infinite series. In this work, the contributions lie in three perspectives: firstly, the second order approximation for the infinite series of the cumulative distribution of the critical value is used to achieve higher precision; secondly, the principles and fixed-point algorithms for solving the Kuiper pair are presented with details; finally, finally, a mistake about the critical value <mml:math xmlns:mml="https://www...

A whole branch of theoretical statistics devotes itself to the analysis of clusters, the aim being to distinguish an apparent cluster arising randomly from one that is more likely to have been produced as a result of some systematic influence. There are many examples in medicine and some that involve both medicine and the legal field; criminal law in particular. Observed clusters or a series of cases in a given setting can set off alarm bells, the recent conviction of Lucy Letby in England being an example...

In this paper, surface electromyography (sEMG) is used to gather the activation neural signal from muscles during an indoor rowing exercise. The exercise was performed by professional athletes and amateur non-athletes. The data acquisition and processing are described to obtain a set of parameters: number of cycles, average cycle time, cycle time standard deviation, fatigue time, muscle activation time, and muscle energy. These parameters are used to draw conclusions on common non-athletes' mistakes during exercise for better training advice and a way of statistically distinguishing an athlete from a non-athlete...

Multidimensional models of perfectionism postulate the existence of various perfectionism traits, with different effects on mental health. In order to suggest parsimonious targets in psychological interventions for university students, this study aimed to explore whether , how , and which individual perfectionism traits are uniquely associated with stress and well-being. The participants were 253 students aged 18-30 who completed the Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale, and the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale...

BACKGROUND: Postpartum hemorrhage is a significant cause of both maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide and is increasing in incidence. This study aimed to assess improvement and identify shortcomings in trainee performance in different simulation systems in the management of postpartum hemorrhage. OBJECTIVE: To perform a pilot study evaluating and comparing high- and low-fidelity simulation models, assessing improvement in repeated performance with high-fidelity mode and identifying mistakes made assessed using Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills and thereby exploring what aspects of emergency management of postpartum hemorrhage should be prioritized in teaching settings and assessing what simulation setup is most effective in achieving competence...

This study investigated the efficacy of combined cognitive bias modification (CBM) on perfectionism and intolerance of uncertainty. Fifty-four university students scoring over 70.5 on the Brief Symptom Measure were randomly assigned to experimental and placebo control groups. The CBM intervention was administered online for 4 weeks. Assessments were given at baseline, after the 4-week intervention, and 1 month post-intervention. Results showed a statistically significant decrease in two dimensions of perfectionism, concern over mistakes and parental criticism, and intolerance of uncertainty of those in the experimental group, compared to those in the control group...

The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to many changes in the medical practice, including a wider access to tele-consultations. It not only influenced the type of treatment but also shed light on mistakes often made by doctors, such as the abuse of antibiotics. This study aimed to evaluate the antibiotic treatment, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on antibiotic prescribing during a GP's visit. The retrospective medical history analysis involved data from a first-contact medical center (Pantamed, Olsztyn, Poland), from 1 January 2018 to 31 May 2023...

Assigning statistical confidence estimates to discoveries produced by a tandem mass spectrometry proteomics experiment is critical to enabling principled interpretation of the results and assessing the cost/benefit ratio of experimental follow-up. The most common technique for computing such estimates is to use target-decoy competition (TDC), in which observed spectra are searched against a database of real (target) peptides and a database of shuffled or reversed (decoy) peptides. TDC procedures for estimating the false discovery rate (FDR) at a given score threshold have been developed for application at the level of spectra, peptides, or proteins...

OBJECTIVE: An applied problem facing all areas of data science is harmonizing data sources. Joining data from multiple origins with unmapped and only partially overlapping features is a prerequisite to developing and testing robust, generalizable algorithms, especially in healthcare. This integrating is usually resolved using meta-data such as feature names, which may be unavailable or ambiguous. Our goal is to design methods that create a mapping between structured tabular datasets derived from electronic health records independent of meta-data...

Background Community pharmacies are integral to the healthcare system, actively contributing to patient safety through accurate dispensing, education, collaboration, monitoring, and the implementation of safety protocols. Their accessibility and role as medication experts make them key partners in promoting positive health outcomes for individuals and communities. Objective The current study will evaluate the patient safety culture (PSC) among community pharmacies in Karachi, Pakistan. Additionally, this study will measure the association between patient safety culture in community pharmacies and the demographic characteristics of the pharmacy staff...

BACKGROUND: The CHILD-BRIGHT Network, a pan-Canadian childhood disability research Network, is dedicated to patient-oriented research, where numerous stakeholders, including patient-partners, researchers, and clinicians are involved at different levels. The Network is committed to continuously improving the level of engagement and partnerships' impact. Measuring patient engagement is therefore important in reflecting on our practices and enhancing our approaches. We aimed to measure patient engagement longitudinally and explore in greater depth the perceived benefits, barriers and facilitators, and overall satisfaction with patient engagement, from the perspectives of the different stakeholders...

John Snow, the London doctor who studied cholera in the 1840s and 1850s, argued in Snow (1856) that water exerted an "overwhelming influence" on mortality in a region of south London during the 1854 outbreak. In a paper re-assessing Snow's analysis, Koch and Denike (2006) claim that "Snow made not merely minor arithmetic errors but more importantly critical, conceptual mistakes that adversely affected his results." The claim of errors and mistakes is incorrect and due to a misreading or misunderstanding of Snow's data and analysis...

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the quality of blood smear examinations for malaria parasites in Chenzhou City, so as to provide insights into sustainable consolidation of malaria elimination achievements. METHODS: All positive blood smears from fever patients were irregularly sampled from each county (district) of Chenzhou City from 2018 to 2022 and reexamined, and no less than 3% negative blood smears were reexamined. The preparation, dyeing, cleanliness and microscopic examination results of blood smear were reexamined, and the quality of blood smear reexaminations was assessed using a descriptive statistical method...

BACKGROUND: A second victim (SV) is a healthcare worker who is traumatized by an unexpected adverse patient case, therapeutic mistake, or patient-associated injury that has not been anticipated. Often, the second victim experiences direct guilt for the harm caused to the patients. Healthcare organizations are often unaware of the emotional toll that adverse events can have on healthcare providers (HCPs) who can be harmed by the same incidents that harm their patients. Second victims (SVs) were present in 10...

When we checked our data in our article "Similar outcome with a new anteverted or a straight standard stem: a randomized study of 72 total hip arthroplasties evaluated with clinical variables, radiostereometry, and DXA up to 2 years" by Karin Rilby, Maziar Mohaddes, Emma Nauclér, and Johan Kärrholm, Acta Orthop 2021; 92, Published online October 21, 2021 we noticed that the numbers in Table 7 (Supplementary data) were incorrect. We have not been able to fully reconstruct the reason for this error...

Tracking followed by analysis of specific point-of-interest from conventional or high-speed video recordings have been widely used for decades in various scientific disciplines such as sport, physiotherapy, and behavioral science. Another method used to characterize movement in 3D involves the use of motion capture systems, which produce files containing a collection of 3D-coordinates and corresponding timestamps. When studying animal or human movement, combining motion tracking with other recording methods-like monitoring muscle activity or sensor signals-can yield valuable insights...

We conducted a critical review of the article "Effects on Children's Physical and Mental Well-Being of a Physical-Activity-Based School Intervention Program: A Randomized Study", published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2023 as part of the Special Issue "Psychomotricity and Physical Education in School Health". We identified multiple mistakes in the statistical analyses applied. First, the authors claim to have found a statistically significant association between the proposed intervention and change in body composition (body mass index (BMI) percentiles, relative fat mass, and BMI classes) by way of exhibiting differences in nominal significance between the pre- and post-intervention changes within the control and intervention groups, instead of exhibiting a significant difference between groups...

BACKGROUND: Poor competence in clinical examination skills among nurses has been reported in practice, and there is a strong consensus that physical examination (PE) education must be improved. However, deficiencies cannot be resolved by theoretical training alone, and new training approaches are required to enable nursing students to perform PE accurately. This study aimed to determine and compare the effect of two new educational methods (mentorship and educational video methods) on the physical examination skills of Iranian nursing students...