While many of us were heading out to dish out candy (or tricks) to local goblins and superheroes this past Halloween, the FDA rounded out their suite of De Novo reclassification orders on DTC genetic testing. The latest announcement adds Personal Genome Service Pharmacogenetic Reports (PGSPR) to the existing regulations for Carrier Screening and Genetic Health Risk (GHR) tests (including a specific case of Genetic Health Risk Report for BRCA1/BRCA2)…
Republish from UNDARK: Where Scientific Mistakes Are Welcome
This is a first for the Launch Pad blog – a complete republish (with permission) of an article from another source. The article included below hit on something that I feel strongly about – enough so that just a summary would not do it justice.
Science is learning and growth in knowledge. If we got it all “right” the first time, it would be a downright boring process (and not science!). Science is about making mistakes, learning from them, and gradually (or sometimes not so gradually) improving on a shared general knowledge.
A Governmental “Source of Public Randomness”
For those who have not yet seen the article, the latest Science magazine includes an article about free to use random number generators. If you are data geek enough to understand the significance of an unpredictable, autonomous, and consistent randomness beacon – then please read on!
ICYMI: Five Ways to Use Previously Collected Survey Data to Improve Quality in a Survey
An oldie but a goody!
Care should always be taken to only use previous data when it is methodologically important to do so. Here are the 5 times that reusing data to enhance your survey is actually ok.
Assessing event-based college student drinking and social context using mobile devices
Most surveys of alcohol-use ask about behaviors and patterns that happen days, weeks months or even years ago. It’s all retrospective recollection from study participants. It’s useful for identifying general trends but it’s fraught with measurement errors. And when the topic of the study is binge drinking, errors involving memory can increase. — even if you’re asking the question the next day.
Examining the Feasibility of Using SMS When Surveying College Students
ext messages (also known as Short Message Service, or SMS) are more and more becoming the go-to medium of communication. This especially is the case for today’s college students, who seem to conduct their social and even business lives completely via their smartphone.
Scott Crawford and the team at SoundRocket looked at the data surrounding the efficacy of using SMS when surveying college students, resulting in a presentation at the 2013 American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) Conference.
ICYMI: My favorite social science podcasts…. Plus one more!
For this list, Scott scoured his (extensive) Favorites category in his Podcast app. Check out the list he came up with awhile back.
Why We Do Checklists
It has been a while since I have communicated about the importance of checklists. It feels that the time is right to do so again… as it will become a more and more important element to what we do as we grow.
Gathering data for direct-to-consumer personal genomic testing made easier with SoundRocket as data collection partner
This was the first experience for any researchers to look closely at the impact of personal genetic testing reports – to see how users understood them and made use of the results they provide. Soundrocket was happy to play a role in this important research.