I relaunched the website STATS.org in 2004 with Maia Szalavitz, and Dr. Rebecca Goldin. STATS' mission is to examine the way science and statistics are used and abused in the media and public debate. It is a non-profit research center affiliated with George Mason University in Virginia.

During my tenure as editor, STATS has been cited and published in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, New Scientist, Reason, Salon, Slate, CNN, NBC Nightly News, NPR. The Poynter Institute's Sree Sreenivasan recommended the site as a go-to source for journalists covering numbers and statistics, as did The Wall Street Journal's "Numbers Guy" and the BBC's Open University.

We have looked at everything from casualties in the Iraq war to the evidence for and against breast feeding. Our aim is to try and report what makes some numbers and methods reliable, what doesn't, and where the weight of evidence on a scientific dispute lies. Sometimes, this has upset people - most notably environmental activists concerned about th risks of the chemical Bisphenol A. This has led them to accuse us of being shills for industry or a shadowy tobacco company PR operation. We do not, however, accept money from industry sources.

Our position on BPA has been shaped by the risk assessments conducted by regulatory bodies around the world and the remarkable consensus that exists among the scientists who have conducted this research that the chemical does not pose a risk, and that there are clear, objective, methodological flaws in the research of those who claim there is a risk.

The stakes are often high for those we criticize, as it affects their professional reputations. What is noteworthy in the controversy over BPA is that our critics have refused to debate the scientific criticisms we have raised and instead resorted to ad-hominem attacks.