Dec. 1, 2010
10 a.m. – 1 p.m. OR 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Royal Statistical Society
12 Errol St, London EC1Y 8LX
This workshop will help journalists see through the numbers behind big stories in health and medicine. Focusing on real stories from recent news, topics include:
- Swine flu and other epidemics
- Medical trials – how to assess the evidence
- What is a ‘quality adjusted life year' and how do we measure it?
- The ‘Spirit Level' – is a more equal society really better for everyone?
- Reporting risk responsibly
- Making fair comparisons between the performance of hospitals and surgeons
- Common pitfalls in reporting statistics
Our panel of leading statisticians, with wide experience of working with the media, will offer plenty of real-life examples, practical tips and searching questions to ask when reporting on a health story. The session will be repeated morning and afternoon, and there is no charge.
The speakers are:
- Professor Sheila Bird, Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge
- Professor Azra Ghani, Chair in Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London
- Professor Stephen Senn, University of Glasgow, author of Dicing With Death: Chance, Risk and Health
- Professor David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University and head of Understanding Uncertainty
To register for a session, contact Dr. Martin Griffiths, national coordinator, Science Training for Journalists at the Royal Statistical Society, on 020 76143947 or m.griffiths@rss.org.uk.