Bias bingo

Week 7 homework — bring your card to the Week 8 content session

The article

Read “Many surgical interventions are little better than placebo”, The Economist, 23 September 2026 (link). If the paywall stops you, the University Library’s subscription gives you access; sign in with your Durham account.

I’ve chosen this article (despite its non-geoscience theme) because it displays the traps we have met this term particularly nicely.

How to play

Each square below names an idea from this course. For each square:

1. Find a place where the article alludes to the concept.
2. Note the paragraph and a few words that locate it.
3. Write one sentence on how it applies: who is biased, what is confounded, compared to what?

A square counts only if you can write the sentence. Not every square has a clean example, and some passages fill more than one.

Bring the completed card to Week 8. Numbers in brackets are the weeks where we met each idea.

Selection bias [3]

Survivorship bias [3]

Confounding [5]

Control group [5]

Randomization [5]

Blinding [5]

Placebo / nocebo [5]

Reporting bias [5]

Base rate neglect [6]

Effect size [7]

Sample size [3]

Generalizability [3]

Replication [6, 9]

Confirmation bias [1]

Multiple comparisons [7]

“Compared to what?” [2]

Bingo is a full row, column or diagonal. Full house is all sixteen.

One more question

Pick your favourite find and answer this: what might the same problem look like in a geological investigation? One or two sentences. We will start the Week 8 content session with these.

Bring to Week 8

Your printed card, and your geological version.