9873210 wrote:Error bar should be the result of independent inquiry about the reliability of data acquisition, not a function of the gathered data.
Not always - e.g. in nuclear physics scattering experiments, the error bars may be a direct function of the gathered data - due to the number of events following Poisson statistics. I can well remember, from many years ago, the months of data collection to get acceptably modest (Poisson statistical) error bars for publication. Other sources of possible error were less significant.
But I digress - in the Covid paper which we were discussing I could not understand in Figure 1A where the straight line comes from, with data points apparently sitting directly on it - yet with significant error bars. Servodude suggested that the straight line could have been some linear fit to data - but where were the data points used in the linear fit - which I would have expected to be scattered around the line? OK - I have had a look at the data source - "EuroStat Excess Mortality By Month". The version I down loaded was dated 17/2/23, and provided data from March 2022. The percentage excess numbers quoted for March to September are 6.6, 11.9, 7.9, 8.3, 17.0, 13.8, 10.1. I think these actual data points should have been displayed alongside any straight line fit - it provides a significantly different outlook.