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    $\begingroup$ Rather, people collect data and only afterwards come here to ask how to analyze it. To consult the statistician after... $\endgroup$
    – Dave
    Commented Jun 25 at 16:09
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    $\begingroup$ When I worked assisting researchers, either at Rusk Institute, NDRI or Downstate Medical Center, I constantly told them to come see me when they had a glimmer of an idea of something they were interested in. They almost never did. At Rusk, one person had years of questionnaires from her patients and gave me the files and asked me to do something with them. She had changed the questions multiple times, had no research question ... Oy! $\endgroup$
    – Peter Flom
    Commented Jun 25 at 16:25
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    $\begingroup$ @PeterFlom This sounds painfully familiar. I don't have a perfect solution, but at my institute, during courses where students perform their own mini-research, we grade them on their proposals, which are required to include an intended analysis. They can come by the statisticians of our department for help. $\endgroup$
    – Frans Rodenburg
    Commented Jun 25 at 16:30
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    $\begingroup$ I recall one woman who ran a big group at (I think) Penn State. She insisted that all her researchers consult statisticians early and often. She also said she wanted to see all grant proposals 3 months before they were due. Her groups had a fantastic record of "acceptance" (not even "revise and resubmit")> $\endgroup$
    – Peter Flom
    Commented Jun 25 at 16:34
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the answer! Regarding your paragraph about planning analyses, I wonder if there are disciplines where it's not possible or very difficult to gather pilot data, due to very expensive or very scarce study material, which can only lead to very small sample sizes (I have archeology in mind, but I'm not very knowledgeable about it, and perhaps there are better examples than that). I guess that in this case, we could use data from other similar studies, instead of pilot data from the specific study we plan to conduct. $\endgroup$
    – Coris
    Commented Jun 25 at 20:49