Re: Experienced Statistician to help decide whether a regression is legitimate

Indeed probably so...
however in the industry it is also the lack of time & hierarchy constraints (you cannot contradict your superior) that prevents (potentially not so untalented and even clever) people to take the time to formalize the problem they should tackle...or that pushes them to autocensure themselves..

Moreover distinguishing good from bad in applied work is time consuming.. Since most management is lay-men in stats-i.e. the rationale if it looks like stats it smells like it.. then it is stats-- is seldom "invalidated"...

Applied statistics at least "seems" a field where "every(many)body feels "I" can do it provided "I" have a good number crunching software.." (less a problem in more theoretical branches where.... you have to prove something without a computer.)

In contrast I've always felt applied work is difficult and that one needs a real talent and quite a bit of rigor to do that..

I believe that for some real problems(criminology, proving that price of assets have been manipulated, and many others..) "quality statistical treatment" can bring some light to the debate (while bad statistical doesn't, or only in the sense that it points to what should'nt be done)...so I do hope to get a chance to discuss with such people- as they exist and have expertise!

Nevertheless I think one should supersede the debate.. of who is good or bad...it is useless and brings nowhere..

In french there is a say: "l'art est difficile et la critique aisée".. art is difficult but critique is easy...

There are and will be good people around everywhere, and their advice & knowledge is useful!

p.s. many books in statistics contradict each other which makes it pretty though if you are not marinating in the field all the time.

To reply to some other poster:
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I cannot walk away from this mess (alas and even if I'd very much like to).
More I will have to propose something potentially improving (...sic).


I'll settle to "less (pseudo) sophisticated treatment" but more sensible...for instance a few well constructed descriptive statistics... at least it will oblige them to sit down and think and maybe then they will come up with something better....
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