Now that I'm back from #ASC2023 I've had some time to reflect a bit.

I really enjoyed meeting lots of fellow statisticians. I had a chance to catch up with old and current colleagues and meet lots of new people. It was great to meet in person but COVID started spreading pretty quickly, I'm afraid.

I was pleasantly surprised that there was a very strong representation of consultants. It was great to exchange experiences (which often turned out to be very similar, but it is good to know you are not alone).

One thing that came up a few times is the difficulty of pushing back against bad practices that are common in a research field. When clients point to published papers to defend their use of dodgy stats it can be difficult to convince them, especially if they are concerned that using a different analysis may make it more difficult for them to publish their study. How do we gain traction in a situation like that? Progress seems difficult as long as journals are happy to publish the questionable analyses.

I'm useless at live-tooting (and the phone running out of battery dies not help) but that's OK.

#statistics #consulting