Recommendations for Describing Statistical Studies and Results in General Readership Science and Engineering Journals

This paper recommends how authors of statistical studies can communicate to general audiences fully, clearly, and comfortably. The studies may use statistical methods to explore issues in science, engineering, and society or they may address issues in statistics specifically. In either case, readers without explicit statistical training should have no problem understanding the issues, the methods, or the results at a non-technical level. The arguments for those results should be clear, logical, and persuasive. This paper also provides advice for editors of general journals on selecting high quality statistical articles without the need for exceptional work or expense. Finally, readers are also advised to watch out for some common errors or misuses of statistics that can be detected without a technical statistical background.