Winning Set of 10 Commandments / Tom Peterman, Atlanta Georgia

1. I have delivered thee out of the land of college and grad school and given unto thee the ability to compare observed vs expected, waste not thy time doing other things.

2. Thou shalt not worship analyses of law, politics, or philosophy.  Thou art to work on observed vs expected.

3.  Thou shalt not claim to have proven something.  Thou comparest observed vs expected, and that is enough.

4.  Respect your analysis and give it time.  Work on structural equations, latent class analysis, propensity scores, and other advanced techniques, but remember that some of your best ideas will come to you while you are just taking a walk.

5.  Honor thy numerators and denominators so that thou canst justly compare observations.

6.  Thou shalt not reject a hypothesis based on a p value alone or even a single study, for there canst be bias and unmeasured confounding.

7.  Thou shalt not intimately involve thyself with what befell an individual, only I know that.  Thy domain is with the population.

8.  Thou shalt not move subjects from one group to another in order to improve thy results.

9.  Thou shalt not claim authorship for papers on which thou hast not labored.

10.  Thou shalt not covet a high salary if thou art in academics, or tenure if thy labor is in industry; even if some now have both. 

bonus:  Golden Rule: Review other’s papers as you would have others review yours.

Honorable Mention / 1^st Runner Up Set of 10 Commandments / Leon Seymore

1. Thou shalt not increase sample size to superamplify tiny differences (well, in any case, not on purpose and definitely not publically for commercial gain).

2. Thou shalt not dichotomise variables gender and sexual orientation in sociological studies. Thou shalt at least think out of the box, kama sutrise and quadrotomise.

3. Thou shalt not regress in times of article review committee feedback (and that includes emotionally or profane linguistically).

4. Thou shalt not debate the criteria of causation with thy spouse,.. thou shalt not dare.

5. Cohort studies in astronomy is strictly forbidden as the human variable "time", outside our solar system does not exist. Ask any alien procrastinator.

6. If thou can't cognite qualitatively... and thou can't cognite quantitatively... take a leaf from the book of a physicist friend, be creative and cognite quantumtatively.

7. Thou shalt not publish dredged megadata collected for other purposes ... except if it is for the common good ... or it makes for fun reading.... or for political gain. OK, then...thou may.

8. Thou shalt perform cohort studies instead of cross-sectional studies when striving to prove truer causation of surgical intervention. Retrospective studies in sigmo sigmoidoscopic treatments are however the exception.
 
9. Thou shalt not covet the case next door, thou shalt covet your control. Thou shalt do as Noah said two-by-two.... and wait for the big rain to fall.

10. Thou shalt honour the last persons chronically listed on each author's list. They will have the most publications after 20 years. Thou shalt be surprised.

 

Honorable Mention / 2^nd Runner Up / Emily White

1. Thou shalt have allegiance only to the Truth.

2. Thou shalt not have any allegiances before the Truth, such as allegiance to thy career.

3. Thou shalt not take the field Epidemiology in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath and try not to work seven days a week.

5. Honor thy Mentors and Funders.

6. Thou shalt not make any graven images when a table wouldst provide more precise information.

7. Thou shalt not commit adulteration of data.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness of thy study conclusions.

9. Thou shalt not  covet  thy neighbor’s CV.

10. Thou shalt not  covet thy neighbor’s grant score.