The Young Statisticians Section of the Royal Statistical Society recently hosted a Funding Day for Career Young Medical/Bio-Statisticians (flyer here). The aim was to help early career statisticians identify and successfully apply for MRC and NIHR fellowships.
People often question the equity and efficiency of how research is published. One problem is the cost to access scientific research. Publishers sell a product that is initially provided to them for free. While the publisher pays to administrate peer-review of the paper, the real value-added contribution is provided free of charge by editors and reviewers. The publisher incurs costs for dissemination, but these have certainly come down over time. However, the journal prices do not seem to reflect these savings, a clear indicator of monopolistic behaviour that has led to massive profits for some publishers.
Obesity can be defined as an accumulation of adipose tissue that deleteriously impacts health and well-being. How do we then measure obesity, as it’s defined here, for epidemiological studies aimed at identifying causes of obesity that may eventually form the basis for later public health intervention?
Mums thinking about homebirth were greeted this week with a host of conflicting headlines regarding its safety in the UK.