MEDCALC - A NEW COMPUTER-PROGRAM FOR MEDICAL STATISTICS

In recent years, the use and abuse of statistics in the medical litera ture has extensively been reviewed. Amongst others, the importance of the P-value has been challenged and the use of misleading graphics, in cluding 3-dimensional displays, has been criticized. The ease of acces s to more complex statistical procedures, since the introduction of se veral statistical software packages for personal computers, has been i dentified as one of the factors involved in the misuse of statistics. Therefore, we have developed a new computer program that includes thos e statistical procedures commonly encountered in the medical literatur e and in statistical textbooks for medical researchers. More complex s tatistical analyses are not implemented in the software. If researcher s with limited statistical training require more sophisticated statist ical analyses, they should refer to a statistician, not to a more comp lete statistical software package.