The American Statistical Association describes eight general topic areas and specify important ethical considerations under each topic. One area is "Professionalism". Professionalism points out the need for competence, judgment, diligence, self-respect, and worthiness of the respect of other people. Which of the following adhere to upholding the ethical guidelines for statistical practice?a) Use only statistical methodologies suitable to the data and to obtaining valid results. For example, address the multiple potentially confounding factors in observational studies and use due caution in drawing causal inferences.
b) Guard against the possibility that a predisposition (bias) by investigators or data providers might predetermine the analytic result.
c) Account for all data considered in a study and explain the sample(s) actually used.
d) All of these are valid elements of professionalism, and are maintaining ethical guidelines.