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.