What is Statisfied?
Statisfied provides weekly reviews of new health and medical research.
I write for the general public as well as health care professionals. My goals are to keep readers up to date on new findings, to promote scientific literacy, and to glean useful lifestyle-related advice from the data.
Statisfied is free. Subscribers receive weekly posts every Thursday evening. (The newsletter can also be accessed directly via Substack.com.)
That’s the gist of this project. Please subscribe and become part of my growing community!
In case you’re curious…
Although I write about new health and medical studies, my broader interest is in how our lives have been transformed by modern statistics.
Statistics, as we know it, is a relatively new discipline. It deserves part of the credit for astonishing progress in science, technology, health care, education, business, social policy (and, of course, AI).
Even if you don't know how statistics contributes to those fields, you can't escape the numbers. When I started planning this blog, in the spring of 2021, President Biden's approval rating had just dipped to 37 percent, Steph Curry finished the NBA season averaging 32 points per game, a new study reported that eating 2 cans of sardines per day lowers the risk of Type II diabetes, and a 40 percent chance of rain was predicted for my city three days in a row. Of course what we were talking about most back then was the pandemic. We parsed vaccine effectiveness statistics, we argued about mortality rates, and so on.
The paragraph you just read would've been inconceivable prior to the 20th century. Not just because things like approval ratings and professional basketball and COVID-19 didn't exist yet, but because experts didn’t have (or elect to use) statistical procedures to generate much of the data we’re now so familiar with.
Statistics has transformed society via its influence on science and other fields. As a result, journalists, politicians, advertisers, doctors, sportscasters, and random bloggers have all got numbers to share. We're accustomed now, for the first time in history, to hearing statistics used as a kind of evidence and a means of persuasion. We're accustomed to looking at surveys to find out who Americans are and how we feel. In a word, since the early 20th century, our society has become “statisfied”.
Unfortunately, when people talk statistics, they don't always get it right. Some of the misuse is unintentional, some is malicious. You might say that statistics are important because they can guide us and lead us astray. Hopefully, my newsletters will serve as a compass, at least in the domain of health and medical research.
Every Thursday, I take a close look at a new study I’ve read or heard about in the news. I provide detailed, plain English discussions of what the researchers found and whether the data can be trusted. I reflect on the implications for our daily lives. And I use the study to illustrate the transformative role of statistics in understanding ourselves and the world around us.
Why subscribe?
1. You're a learner. (A "newsletter" ought to convey "news".)
2. You're a thinker. (I hope to stimulate reflection.)
3. You're busy. (You may not have time to read the original studies.)
4. You may become healthier. (The studies I review explore how health is affected by lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, sleep, stress, social media and AI use.)
5. You don't need statistical expertise. (I write for both health care professionals as well as lay audiences.)
6. You may not have access to the data. (Some of the studies I discuss are paywalled.)
Who am I?
I’m a Professor Emeritus from Southern Methodist University. ("Emeritus" is Latin for "retired-and-loving-it").
I received my Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Cornell University in 1990. After graduation I joined the Department of Psychology at SMU, then switched to our School of Education in 2002 and remained there until my retirement in 2021.
Although I’m not a statistician, I engaged with applied statistics throughout my career – publishing research, conducting program evaluations, teaching graduate stats and research methods, and chairing SMU's Institutional Review Board. In tandem with this newsletter, I'm writing a book on how statistics continues to transform American society.
I enjoy publishing a new Statisfied post each Thursday evening. I invite you to subscribe, to e-mail me with feedback, questions, or requests (kspringe@smu.edu), and to share this newsletter with friends.
