Meta-analysis: A Journey to Simple Research

-- 塞翁失马，黔驴归兮*

1. When I was still a PhD student at University of California at Santa Barbara, I did pretty much the same as the majority of doctoral students and strived to publish papers in top statistics journals. And from that point of view, my performance during the PhD study could be rated as satisfactory or above.
   
   
              
   
   
   
   
2. Shortly after the beginning of my research career, I started to receive a typical type of rejection letters from top statistics journals, with the main reason that my papers were written too simply and thus too easy to be understood, no matter whether the underlying ideas are enough innovative or significant. When the door to top statistics journals gradually closes to me, I suddenly realized that my “being able to write a simple paper” talent may, in fact, opened another door for me.
   
   
        
   
   
   
   
3. When statisticians get a headache and visit medical doctors, they are often treated with effective medicine so that the headache can be either cured or, at least, temporarily relieved. On the other hand, however, when medical doctors need statistical methods, they usually get a big headache (instead of pleasure) reading papers written by statisticians, partially because many statistical papers were written in a “pretending to be deep” style even though the statistical ideas behind it may actually be quite simple.
   
   
              
   
   
   
   
4. If statisticians don't want to be mistakenly classified as “bad guys”, then it is time to call for a change of the current statistical culture. It is our responsibility, as statisticians, to be able to present the statistical methods in a simple, elegant and practical way so that practitioners can easily understand and use, and with the possibility that they will call from the deep of their hearts that our statistical methods make their life easy or a lot easier.
   
   
              
   
   
   
   
5. Toward that end, I am proud so far of my simple research in developing new and novel statistical methods for meta-analysis, mainly encouraged by dozens of thank-you letters, public forum posts, and review articles from researchers and medical doctors all over the world. Should you also enjoy reading our papers, please do not hesitate to share with us your thoughts. Your encouragement will, undoubtedly, turn to new and great energy for us, in particular for my PhD students, to continue on the journey to simple research.
   
   
              
   
   
              
   
   
              
   
   
   

*注释：有个边缘学科的老学究，因为缺乏学术论文之“深入”写作能力，穷尽驷马之力亦难发表专业顶刊。以酒买醉，于偶然间欣喜得知（请见JASA主编之点评）尚存“浅出”这一黔驴之技，幡然醒悟，以此慰余生，不亦乐乎！

*解读：统计学作为一门交叉性较强的应用学科，不仅需要深层次的理论研究以推动统计学自身学科的发展，更需要有“简单、优雅、实用”的统计方法从而将统计学的影响力真正渗透至别的学科并成为推动社会进步的正能量。