“The time has come for statisticians to report the news!” – T. Butterworth

David Morganstein

Our mission statement says we will “seek opportunities to advance the statistics profession” and “promote the proper application of statistics.” Our strategic plan includes the objective of “increasing the visibility of the profession.” In one of her President’s Corner columns, former ASA

President Marie Davidian reminded us, “[W]e … seemed reluctant to promote ourselves in a significant way to fellow scientists and the public.” Many of us have an important role as a team player, but less frequently are the people “out front” who lead or promote the work. Fortunately, the ASA added Jeff Myers as our public relations coordinator. From his first day with us, he has sought out journalists and engaged them in dialogue with our members. His efforts supporting our mission and strategic plan are paying off!

In yet another step to advance our profession, I worked with Executive Director Ron Wasserstein to create a blog on “all things statistical,” which is targeted to journalists and the general public. We recently reached an agreement with Sense About Science USA to partner in managing the STATS.org website—described in Myers’ article, “ASA, Sense About Science USA Partner to Help Raise Media Statistical Literacy.” This joint effort will expand our efforts to communicate our valuable contributions to nonstatisticians in a readable format (avoiding our often arcane terminology!).

When you visit STATS.org, you’ll see a link to our home page. STATS.org is a nonprofit and nonpartisan project funded by a grant from the Searle Freedom Trust and a donation from the ASA. The About Us page says, “If you are a statistician, you are unlikely to engage in journalism in a serious way, and if you are a journalist, you are unlikely to engage in statistics in a serious way.” With our new partnership, we aim to change this.

I’d like to introduce you to Rebecca Goldin, professor of mathematical science at George Mason University, and Trevor Butterworth, a journalist. They are the talent behind STATS.org and our new partners. Rebecca is the director, and Trevor is editor-in-chief.

Tell us a bit about your background. Why did you join Sense About Science USA? How is your work there helping you meet your professional goals?

Trevor: I arrived in the United States from Ireland 22 years ago, ostensibly, to do preliminary work for a PhD—but with little sense of what that work should be. I was all over the place, drawn to philosophy of language and intellectual history, but dissuaded by a feeling that I did not possess a sufficiently mathematical mind to do philosophy well and that much intellectual history was the history of badly done philosophy. Exhausted, I decided that what I enjoyed most was writing—and so I launched my journalism career as a media critic after over-intellectualizing and under-reporting a degree at Columbia’s journalism school. Ironically, I had found my subject: the power of the press to misrepresent the world and the inverse relationship between such misrepresentation and statistical understanding.

As a consequence, I was invited to speak at last year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by the British charity Sense About Science. The panel was on the importance and use of evidence. I focused on why it was important for journalists to understand the importance of statistical evidence in scientific research. There was a lunch afterward for all the speakers, including the panelists who had spoken about the importance of understanding uncertainty in policymaking, and the conversational brio spoke volumes. I wanted that conversation to continue. As we headed out into a Chicago blizzard, I said to Sense About Science’s director, Tracey Brown, “If you want to set up Sense About Science in the U.S., I’m interested….”

Trevor: Sense About Science USA builds on the 12-year track record of an organization that has energized public debate in the U.K. on the importance of understanding science and evidence, one that has garnered support from that country’s leading scientific institutions and societies. Working with Sense About Science will provide a platform for better outreach and communication. And with ASA, we have an opportunity to create a powerful campaign for statistical literacy—one that explains why statistical knowledge is central to a data-intensive world.

Rebecca: Sense About Science provides a bridge between the public and the academic, highlighting the importance of the practice of statistics in light of the complicated questions that arise from the enormous ativan online with no prescription amount of data we collect. Simply put, if statisticians can’t clearly explain the science to those who fund it (to a large part, the public), then we are all vulnerable to less public interest in promoting scientific inquiry. By providing direct assistance to journalists, the Sense About Science-ASA collaboration can actually change the way numbers are reported.

Rebecca: I was trained in symplectic geometry at MIT. I love mathematics, but I’ve always felt that I wanted to do more than just prove theorems that appeal to a small number of people. I particularly enjoy the complexity and depth of simple mathematical concepts. My favorite teaching tactic is to take something everyone knows and flesh it out until it becomes something mysterious and powerful.

When STATS.org joined George Mason University, I came on board as director of research. I brought this point of view to elementary statistical thinking. The first thing I learned was that I had no idea how to write! Over the years, I concluded that working scientists (and mathematicians and statisticians) have a lot to learn from writers and nonmathematical thinkers, and that this exchange was crucial for the benefit of both communities. For what is the point of mathematics if no one understands it? And what is the point of science without statistical rigor? As for the impact on my career, well, my talks became a lot more entertaining!

What readership are you aiming for with STATS.org?

Trevor: Fundamentally, anyone who is interested in understanding the quantitative basis of knowledge: What makes a study claim reliable or unreliable? So much of the news is simplified to such a degree that you have to take it on trust. Yet, public opinion surveys have consistently shown an overwhelming lack of trust in the news media’s capacity to get the facts right and report things fairly. This isn’t academic. At Forrester Research, John Kindervag developed the Zero Trust Model of cybersecurity, the guiding principle of which is “never trust, always verify.” It is an apt principle for a world of battered institutional reputations and widespread skepticism. We need a new journalism of verification, a journalism of and about statistics. Obviously, a lot of what we’re going to do is a commentary on news and on scientific research, so we expect our core audience will be composed of journalists and scientists. Our goal is to get both talking about the importance of statistics. Based on talks we’ve both given to journalism workshops, we believe there is a real appetite for this kind of engagement—along with our experience of providing assistance with reading and analyzing studies to journalists—from the AP to Wired, the Economist to The New York Times—over the past decade.

Rebecca: There’s also interest from educators. Schools are increasingly recognizing the importance of basic statistical literacy in a functioning democracy and economy. We’ve always had a core group of high-school and college teachers who enjoy reading our material and forwarding it to their students; we offer an explicit connection between real life (as represented in the media) and statistical concepts (as expressed in statistics classes).

More people recognize the need for basic statistics in reporting. At the same time, we’ve witnessed a surge of interest in “wonk” or “explainer journalism.” So, I do think there is a bigger audience, the broader public, for this kind of analysis. The time has come for statisticians to report the news in a very understandable and interesting way!

How does the alliance of STATS.org with the ASA and its affiliation with Sense About Science USA change the organization?

Rebecca: We’ve always been a small shop, focusing on elementary statistical topics. We hope that our connection to ASA will help us scale up and improve communication between writers and statisticians. STATS.org will play a larger educational role, focusing on the real-world play of statistical ideas, rather than only the journalistic “take” on misunderstood ideas. The affiliation with Sense About Science USA will promote STATS.org internationally and demonstrate that STATS.org stands for the public interest in representing science.

Let’s fast-forward to a year from now. How will we know our partnership and the new site have been successful?

Rebecca and Trevor: We’ll know our success by the numbers: The number of journalists seeking out engagement with statisticians, and the outcome of those engagements; the number of statisticians seeking to engage with journalists; and the number of conversations generated in other media.