I have never been able to pull together a respectable set of statistical skills. Even basic things, like the difference between standard deviation and standard error, are eternally confounding. I end up scouring biology websites and message boards every time I have the most basic statistical question and only manage to pull together a dim fog of understanding for all my efforts.

I liked this advice I found today:

"When you are trying to emphasize small and unimportant differences in your data, show your error bars as the standard errors for the groups and hope that your readers think they are standard deviations.

When you are trying to cover-up large differences, show the error bars as the standard deviations for the groups, and hope that your readers think they are a standard errors."

It was on a research biostatistician's website no less.