At the 2008 International Stroke Conference, an abstract was presented which claimed that strokes are more prevalent in the United States than Europe because of higher rates of stroke risk factors and barriers to care in the United States compared to Europe. *Pause* In case you missed that last part the authors claim it is because of barriers to care in the United States a rather general claim which hopefully would be supported by solid data. However if we read further into this study we can find major flaws.

The authors use interviews among people 50 and older from 11 European countries and the United States. While interview data is considered valid to use it is typically considered incomplete due to inherent flaws in the interview process and the fact that it is self reporting of medical conditions and not the actual diagnostic data itself. It should be noted the authors freely admit this is a flaw with the data they are presenting.

Further complicating the issue was the authors comment that, “However, for stroke, the picture is more complicated.  For instance, although Italy has relatively low stroke prevalence, former studies indicate that Italians have a similar or higher stroke incidence rate than people in other European countries or the United States.  Thus, the results on prevalence may also reflect poor stroke survival in Italy, which will result in a lower prevalence of stroke.” This fact is in direct conflict with the author’s contention that barriers to care in the United States cause higher incidence of stroke by the fact that the United States seems to have a higher survival rate than the survival rate in a comparable European country which could explain the higher report of strokes in the United States. What this shows is a more detailed and thorough study should be carried out before claiming that United States has higher stroke rates let alone that this is due to barriers of care.

This abstract brings to light how complicated science and data analysis truly are, I see far too many studies which make generalized claims without significant data to back up conclusions. In my opinion I believe part of these flaws in many experiments and papers is due to the lack of proper science education. Far too little emphasis is placed upon statistical analysis and what conclusions can be made from such analysis resulting in many published peer reviewed papers which make claims that can not be supported by the data they present.