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EDITORIAL |
From the Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri (K.E.F.); Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Baltimore, Maryland (R.P.M.); Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville (D.S.S.).
Address reprint requests to: Kenneth E. Freedland, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO. E-mail: FreedlaK{at}bmc.wustl.edu
This issue of Psychosomatic Medicine marks the debut of the Statistical Corner. The goals of this new feature are to promote good statistical practices, to introduce readers to advanced statistical methods, to provide practical guides to specific techniques, and to address methodological issues in psychosomatic research. The articles will be invited and peer reviewed.
We decided to launch this feature because there is a growing statistics gap in our field, and it is hindering the progress of psychosomatic research. Many of us are statistical dinosaurs, having been trained years ago when power analysis was an arcane art, practiced only by mysterious old wizards in the dark basements of biostatistics departments, and when ordinary analysis of variance was the most advanced technique we were required to study. Most of us thought that the statistical stone tools available to us at the time were the only ones we would ever need, and we had no idea that great advances in methodology would be achieved in the coming decades. Those advances have begun to transform our field, and the dinosaurs among us have to adapt to this evolving environment to avoid extinction.
The gap has grown has grown large enough to swallow more recent trainees as well. Some of us were trained as behavioral scientists, but we find ourselves working at the interdisciplinary interface between behavioral science and medical research. We were trained in statistical methods for the behavioral and social sciences, and we lack formal training in biostatistics and epidemiology. Some of us have the opposite problem. Many psychologists, for example, learn nothing about survival analysis during their graduate training, and many epidemiologists learn nothing about structural equation modeling. Many physicians receive limited training in basic biostatistical methods and no training at all in most of the new, advanced methods. Regardless of our educational background, after we graduate and embark on our research careers, we soon discover that expert statistical consultation and collaboration are scarce resources. Consequently, many of us find ourselves struggling to understand a multitude of unfamiliar and formidable statistical methods and blithely misusing the familiar ones.
The statistics gap is also an unintended consequence of our well-justified disdain for methodologically sophisticated trivia, ie, studies in which fancy, complicated statistical techniques are used to investigate dull, unimportant phenomena. Unfortunately, some of us are so turned off by fancy, complicated statistics that we assume that any study that employs them must be dull and unimportant, or at least not worth the effort to read. This attitude is becoming increasingly untenable because advanced methods are entering the mainstream of medical research and appearing in papers that have unquestionable scientific significance. We cannot afford to ignore these studies, so we have to equip ourselves to understand them.
Some may grumble that these advanced methods are vexatious nuisances inflicted on us by statistical zealots who know nothing about the real world of clinical research, but that is, of course, nonsense. They are some of our most useful scientific tools. They are our Hubble telescopes, our CERN particle accelerators, our scanning tunneling microscopes. If we embrace them, they will enable us to study phenomena that were previously beyond our analytical grasp, and to see relationships that were previously invisible. They will also give us more accurate and replicable answers to our questions, and help us make the best use of our hard-earned data.
Our first Statistical Corner paper is an excellent illustration of this point (1). In it, Dr. Maria Llabre and her colleagues at the University of Miami introduce us to an advanced technique called latent growth curve (LGC) modeling and illustrate its utility by meticulously dissecting some original data on cardiovascular recovery from stress. They show us how LGC modeling yields new insights that would never have been uncovered with less sophisticated methods. The paper includes some moderately difficult material, but readers who are fortunate enough to have attended Dr. Llabre’s workshop on growth curve modeling know that she is a very talented teacher and methodologist who makes the hard parts understandable.
Some of the articles in the Statistical Corner may be easier to read than this one, and others may be harder, but all of them will be written for a broad audience rather than for expert statisticians. Some of them will, like this one, introduce readers to new advances in methodology. Others will help us to use familiar techniques more effectively, or show us where we are making methodological mistakes and how we can overcome them in order to improve the quality, credibility, and impact of psychosomatic research. We hope that our readers, reviewers, and contributors will find them to be useful. We also hope that they will find their way into the classrooms where the next generation of psychosomatic researchers is currently being trained.
Although the Statistical Corner is unique in that it is tailored to the needs of the psychosomatic research community, Psychosomatic Medicine is not the first journal to throw out a methodological life preserver to save its readers from drowning in a sea of statistics. Some of the most informative papers have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in a series entitled "User’s Guides to the Medical Literature." The entire series is available to subscribers through a link on JAMA’s web site. The British Medical Journal has published many excellent and highly informative methodological papers in its "Education and Debate" series. They are available at www.bmj.org. Another outstanding resource is a book published by the American College of Physicians, entitled How to Report Statistics in Medicine (2).
The Statistical Corner joins our recent endorsement of the CONSORT, MOOSE, and QUOROM guidelines as efforts to improve the quality and reporting of statistical methods in medical research. See www.consort-statement.org for further details on CONSORT for reporting clinical trials, MOOSE for reporting meta-analyses of epidemiological and other observational studies, and QUOROM for reporting meta-analyses of clinical trials.
We are proud to launch the Statistical Corner and grateful to Dr. Llabre and her colleagues for getting the series off to an impressive start. The Statistical Corner will appear in every other issue of the journal. We welcome your feedback and suggestions for future articles.
APPENDIX
Reviewers for Psychosomatic Medicine
The editors of Psychosomatic Medicine acknowledge with appreciation the efforts of the following colleagues who helped to ensure the quality of the Journal by reviewing manuscripts from November 1, 2002 through October 31, 2003.
James L. Abelson
Kurt D. Ackerman
Christina D. Adams
Lucile L. Adams-Campbell
Robert Ader
Perry Samuel John Adler
Niloo Afari
Lesley A. Allen
Michael T. Allen
Georg W. Alpers
Gerhard Andersson
Michael Andrykowski
Bengt Birger Arnetz
J. Hampton Atkinson
Michael A. Babyak
Elizabeth A. Bachen
Anthony L. Back
Wayne A. Bardwell
John C. Barefoot
Steven D. Barger
Roshan Bastani
Marco Battaglia
Andrew Baum
Alan Roger Beeber
Brad Bender
Grant Benham
Jill Bennett
Mats Berg
Sylvie Berthoz
Philip A. Bialer
Niels Birbaumer
Grethe S. Birketvedt
Paul H. Black
Pierre Blier
James A. Blumenthal
Sarah W. Book
Jan Born
Dana Bovbjerg
Philip Boyce
H. Stefan Bracha
Edith E. Bragdon
Henk S. Brand
Timothy D. Brewerton
Joan E Broderick
Elizabeth Brondolo
Jos F. Brosschot
Kimberly A. Brownley
Kenneth Bruce
Michael W. Bungo
Matthew M. Burg
Mary H. Burleson
Victoria E. Burns
Regina Bussing
Patrick S. Calhoun
Oliver G. Cameron
John P. Capitanio
Linda Ellen Carlson
James Carmody
Robert M. Carney
Kimberly Carson
Glenn Catalano
Edith Chen
Margaret A. Chesney
Edward R. Christophersen
Donald S. Ciccone
Daniel J. Clauw
Robert Cloninger
Ray Clouse
Frances Cohen
Lorenzo Cohen
C. Richard Conti
Jerry M. Cott
James C. Coyne
Timothy Craig
Francis Hunter Creed
Dean G. Cruess
Mark R. Cullen
Jonathan R. Davidson
Karina W. Davidson
Richard J. Davidson
Dmitry M. Davydov
Karon Dawkins
Ron de Graaf
Peter de Jonge
Leonard R. Derogatis
Robert Devellis
Michael J. Devlin
Mary Amanda Dew
Chris Dickens
Sally S. Dickerson
Joel E. Dimsdale
Stephan Doering
Douglas A. Drossman
Benjamin G. Druss
W. Patrick Duff
Christopher L. Edwards
Penelope Kelly Elias
Murray W. Enns
Javier I. Escobar
Susan A. Everson-Rose
Giovannia A. Fava
Roger B. Fillingim
Edwin B. Fisher
Janine D. Flory
Robert Folmer
Catherine Forneris
Nancy Frasure-Smith
Kenneth E. Freedland
Carol S. Fullerton
John E.J. Gallacher
Linda C. Gallo
Malcolm Garland
Bradley Neil Gaynes
William Gerin
Peter John Gianaros
Frank G. Gilliam
J. Christian Gillin
A. H. Glassman
Dorie A. Glover
Roger Godbout
Marion U. Goebel
Mark S. Gold
Robert N. Golden
Iris B. Goldstein
Renee D Goodwin
Julia A. Graber
Christian Guilleminault
Brooks B. Gump
Mary Haan
Sy Halleck
Eileen M. Handberg
Gregory A. Harshfield
Roger F. Haskett
Mark G. Haviland
Margaret M. Heitkemper
Dirk Helmut Hellhammer
Victoria Hendrick
Peter Henningsen
Ronald B. Herberman
Christoph Herrmann-Lingen
David B. Herzog
Alan L. Hinderliter
Mardi J. Horowitz
Matthew Hotopf
Christine A. Hovanitz
William B. Howells
Paul Hrdina
Jonathan J. Hunter
Carlos Iribarren
Michael R. Irwin
Allan S. Jaffe
Jack E. James
Michael A. Jantz
J. Richard Jennings
Wei Jiang
James H. Johnson
Derek W. Johnston
Bruce S. Jonas
Ann Josefsson
Thomas Kahan
Thomas W. Kamarck
Andrew J. Karter
Stanislav V. Kasl
Wayne J. Katon
Peter Kaufmann
Francis J. Keefe
Pamela K. Keel
Laurence Kennedy
Mark William Ketterer
Janice Kiecolt-Glaser
Kristin Kilbourn
Phillip M. Kleespies
David Klonsky
Kelly L. Klump
Sarah Knox
Cornelis G. Kooiman
Cheryl Koopman
Willem J. Kop
David S. Krantz
Nancy R. Kressin
Jean L. Kristeller
Mark Kritchevsky
Kurt Kroenke
Markus Kruesi
Tannis M. Laidlaw
Rachel Lampert
Friedhelm Lamprecht
Gilles Lavigne
James D. Lane
Richard D. Lane
Timothy L. Lash
Kathleen A. Lawler
Maciej Lazarczyk
Dominic T. S. Lee
Irving G. Leon
Jane Leserman
François Lespérance
Ira Lesser
Susan Levenstein
Howard Leventhal
Rona L. Levy
Megan A. Lewis
Jiong Li
Kathleen C. Light
Wolfgang Linden
Mark D. Litt
Maria M. Llabre
Henrietta Logan
William R. Lovallo
Bernd Löwe
Mark A. Lumley
Susan K. Lutgendorf
William Maixner
Stephen B. Manuck
Dawn A. Marcus
Daniel B. Mark
Anna Marsland
Jack D. Maser
Karen A. Matthews
Robert G. Maunder
Philip McCabe
Jeanne M. McCaffery
James A. McCubbin
Roger S. McIntyre
Robert P. McMahon
Samantha Meltzer-Brody
Elizabeth Sibolboro Mezzacappa
Kristin D. Mickelson
Andrew Hebb Miller
Gregory E. Miller
James E. Mitchell
Jack G. Model
Lisa Morrow
Eric Mortensen
Ron F. Mucha
Matthew Muldoon
Dominique L. Musselman
Stephen E. Nadeau
Lillian M. Nail
Benjamin H. Natelson
Charles Nemeroff
D. Jeffrey Newport
Raymond Niaura
Wilmer W. Nichols
Kristy A. Nielson
Ivan Nyklicek
Maurice M. Ohayon
James H O’Keefe Jr.
Maria A. Oquendo
Kristina Orth-Gomér
Massimo Pagani
Olafur Palsson
Carmine M. Pariante
Patricia A. Parker
Thomas Patterson
Arnold Peckerman
James W. Pennebaker
Mary Peoples-Sheps
Deidre B. Pereira
Kenneth A. Perkins
Natalie A. Phillips
Thomas G. Pickering
Etta D. Pisano
Michael F. Pogue-Geile
Thomas Pollmacher
Stephen W. Porges
Karen Sue Quigley
Douglas A. Raynor
Quentin Regestein
Nina Reickmann
Steven Reid
William H. Reid
Dieter Reimann
Maude R. Rittman
Thomas Ritz
Michael E. Robinson
James R. Rodrigue
Scott C. Roesch
Bruce L. Rollman
Walton T. Roth
Ronald H. Rozensky
Thomas Rutledge
Peter Salmon
Kristen Salomon
Paolo Santonastaso
Stephen M. Saravay
Carsten M. Schmalfuss
Neil Schneiderman
Richard S. Schofield
Stephen L. Seagren
Samuel Sears
Peter Andrew Shapiro
Edmond D. Shenassa
Sheldon G. Sheps
James Sherman
Andrew Sherwood
Jillian Shipherd
Dennis Shusterman
Greg J. Siegle
Ilene C. Siegler
Steven D. Silberstein
Magnus Simren
Denise Sloan
Richard P. Sloan
Kevin W. Smith
Barbara Arleen Sommer
Robert Soufer
David Spiegel
Melinda A. Stanley
Phyllis K. Stein
Andrew Steptoe
Stephen L. Stern
Philip Christopher Strike
Margaret Lois Stuber
Edward C. Suarez
Mark D. Sullivan
Jerry Suls
Joseph Telfair
Julian F. Thayer
Beverly E. Thorn
Frank A. Treiber
Michael Tueth
Eric N. Turkheimer
Amy M. Ursano
Viola Vaccarino
Omer Van den Bergh
Richard C. Veith
W. Victor Vieweg
Roland von Kanel
Shari R. Waldstein
Herb Ward
Lana L. Watkins
Lea C. Watson
Sherry Weitzen
Mary A. Whooley
Redford Williams
Robert A. Wise
Thomas N. Wise
Kathy Wisner
Lawson R. Wulsin
James K. Wyatt
Kimberly A. Yonkers
Elizabeth Young
Carolyn B. Yucha
Alex J. Zautra
Roy C. Ziegelstein
Michael G. Ziegler
Mark Zimmerman
Caron Zlotnick
John A. Zwart
REFERENCES
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