Response to a call for sport scientists to increase collaboration with statisticians

[Will Hopkins]

Some of you will have seen a recent opinion piece in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, where a group led by Kristin Sainani issued a "call to increase statistical collaboration in sports science, sport and exercise medicine and sports physiotherapy." The evidence supporting the call was a series of case studies exemplifying research by sport scientists that was allegedly unsound, either because the research was about a method that had not been vetted by statisticians in statistical journals (e.g., magnitude-based inference) or because a "statistician" was not involved (every example they provided).

A group of us led by Dan Cleather has now published a comment, in which we point out the following flaws in the opinion piece... New statistical methods that address the needs of a discipline have been--and are still--often published in discipline-specific journals. The case studies are presented in biased fashion and do not actually represent examples of unsound research. And most of the case studies included authors who by any reasonable definition are experienced applied statisticians.

In summary, "some of Sainani et al.’s arguments are calls to authority rather than genuine engagement in scholarly debate... Sports scientists and statisticians have different criteria for what makes a method appropriate, and statistical or mathematical concerns don’t automatically trump experimental, philosophical or practical considerations. Instead, effective collaborations involve consensus-building in a spirit of mutual respect. To progress the field effectively, we need genuine partnerships not authoritarian edicts."

Will