Editor's blog Thursday 18 June 2009: a stand for good stats

Good afternoon. A very quick post to point you towards an excellent piece in today's Times introducing the new body Straight Statistics.

The excellent Nigel Hawkes (formerly a journalist for The Times parish) is director of this new organisation, which aims to point out good practice in statistical use and to highlight abuse. Straight Statistics is going to be A Good Thing, and it deserves an unreserved welcome. Their website is http://straightstatistics.org

I am writing this from the Innovation Expo, which is very large indeed and contains many wonderful gadgets and gizmos. You may already have seen Mike Farrar's guest editorial today on the subject of innovation.

Congratulations, by the way, to everybody involved in the latest progress on reducing healthcare-associated infections, shown by the new figures announced by the Health Protection Agency. Mainstream media coverage of this is likely to be scant - which is a pyrrhic victory of sorts.