Paul Alper pointed me to this news story, “Harvard Calls for Retraction of Dozens of Studies by Noted Cardiac Researcher: Some 31 studies by Dr. Piero Anversa contain fabricated or falsified data, officials concluded. Dr. Anversa popularized the idea of stem cell treatment for damaged hearts.” I replied: Ahhh, Harvard . . . the reporter […]
Category: Miscellaneous Science
“Retire Statistical Significance”: The discussion.
So, the paper by Valentin Amrhein, Sander Greenland, and Blake McShane that we discussed a few weeks ago has just appeared online as a comment piece in Nature, along with a letter with hundreds (or is it thousands?) of supporting signatures. Following the first circulation of that article, the authors of that article and some […]
My two talks in Montreal this Friday, 22 Mar
McGill University Biostatistics seminar, Purvis Hall, 102 Pine Ave. West, Room 25, 1-2pm Fri 22 Mar: Resolving the Replication Crisis Using Multilevel Modeling In recent years we have come to learn that many prominent studies in social science and medicine, conducted at leading research institutions, published in top journals, and publicized in respected news outlets, […]
Statistical-significance thinking is not just a bad way to publish, it’s also a bad way to think
Eric Loken writes: The table below was on your blog a few days ago, with the clear point about p-values (and even worse the significance versus non-significance) being a poor summary of data. The thought I’ve had lately, working with various groups of really smart and thoughtful researchers, is that Table 4 is also a […]
Not Dentists named Dennis, but Physicists named Li studying Li
Charles Jackson writes: I was spurred to do this search by reading an article in the 30 Mar 2018 issue of Science. The article was: Self-heating–induced healing of lithium dendrites by Lu Li et al. Wikipedia says that more than 93 million people in China have the surname Li. I found 62 articles on Lithium […]
(back to basics:) How is statistics relevant to scientific discovery?
Someone pointed me to this remark by psychology researcher Daniel Gilbert: Publication is not canonization. Journals are not gospels. They are the vehicles we use to tell each other what we saw (hence “Letters” & “proceedings”). The bar for communicating to each other should not be high. We can decide for ourselves what to make […]
Journalist seeking scoops is as bad as scientist doing unreplicable research
Tom Scocca shares this dispiriting story: Yesterday, as a news day, was an even worse cascade of lies and confusion and gibberish than usual. Yet what stood out the most was a single word: “Clarification.” It appeared at the bottom of a very short Axios post by reporter Jonathan Swan, introducing a note that read, […]
Good news! Researchers respond to a correction by acknowledging it and not trying to dodge its implications
In a letter to the Journal of Nursing Research, Brown and Allison write: We question the conclusions that a health promotion model “was highly effective for gaining healthy life behaviors and the control of BMI of the participants” in an article recently published in The Journal of Nursing Research (Fidanci, Akbayrak, & Arslan, 2017). The […]
George Orwell meets statistical significance: “Politics and the English Language” applied to science
1. Political writing: imprecision as a tool for obscuring the indefensible In his classic essay, “Politics and the English Language,” the political journalist George Orwell drew a connection between cloudy writing and cloudy content. The basic idea was: if you don’t know what you’re saying, or if you’re trying to say something you don’t really […]
I believe this study because it is consistent with my existing beliefs.
Kevin Lewis points us to this.
“Using 26,000 diary entries to show ovulatory changes in sexual desire and behavior”
Kevin Lewis points us to this research paper by Ruben Arslan, Katharina Schilling, Tanja Gerlach, and Lars Penke, which begins: Previous research reported ovulatory changes in women’s appearance, mate preferences, extra- and in-pair sexual desire, and behavior, but has been criticized for small sample sizes, inappropriate designs, and undisclosed flexibility in analyses. Examples of such […]
Facial feedback is back
Fritz Strack points us to this new paper, A multi-semester classroom demonstration yields evidence in support of the facial feedback effect, by Abigail Marsh, Shawn Rhoads, and Rebecca Ryan, which begins with some background: The facial feedback effect refers to the influence of unobtrusive manipulations of facial behavior on emotional outcomes. That manipulations inducing or […]
Science as an intellectual “safe space”? How to do it right.
I don’t recall hearing the term “safe space” until recently, but now it seems to be used all the time, by both the left and the right, to describe an environment where people can feel free to express opinions that might be unpopular in a larger community, without fear of criticism or contradiction. Sometimes a […]
Of butterflies and piranhas
John Cook writes: The butterfly effect is the semi-serious claim that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a tornado half way around the world. It’s a poetic way of saying that some systems show sensitive dependence on initial conditions, that the slightest change now can make an enormous difference later . . . Once […]
Becker on Bohm on the important role of stories in science
Tyler Matta writes: During your talk last week, you spoke about the role of stories in scientific theory. On page 104 of What Is Real: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics, Adam Becker talks about stories and scientific theory in relation to alternative conceptions of quantum theory, particularly between Bohm’s pilot-wave interpretation […]
The post Becker on Bohm on the important role of stories in science appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
“Dissolving the Fermi Paradox”
Jonathan Falk writes: A quick search seems to imply that you haven’t discussed the Fermi equation for a while. This looks to me to be in the realm of Miller and Sanjurjo: a simple probabilistic explanation sitting right under everyone’s nose. Comment? “This” is a article, Dissolving the Fermi Paradox, by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler […]
The post “Dissolving the Fermi Paradox” appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
“Dissolving the Fermi Paradox”
Jonathan Falk writes: A quick search seems to imply that you haven’t discussed the Fermi equation for a while. This looks to me to be in the realm of Miller and Sanjurjo: a simple probabilistic explanation sitting right under everyone’s nose. Comment? “This” is a article, Dissolving the Fermi Paradox, by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler […]
The post “Dissolving the Fermi Paradox” appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
What to do when you read a paper and it’s full of errors and the author won’t share the data or be open about the analysis?
Someone writes: I would like to ask you for an advice regarding obtaining data for reanalysis purposes from an author who has multiple papers with statistical errors and doesn’t want to share the data. Recently, I reviewed a paper that included numbers that had some of the reported statistics that were mathematically impossible. As the […]
The post What to do when you read a paper and it’s full of errors and the author won’t share the data or be open about the analysis? appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
What to do when you read a paper and it’s full of errors and the author won’t share the data or be open about the analysis?
Someone writes: I would like to ask you for an advice regarding obtaining data for reanalysis purposes from an author who has multiple papers with statistical errors and doesn’t want to share the data. Recently, I reviewed a paper that included numbers that had some of the reported statistics that were mathematically impossible. As the […]
The post What to do when you read a paper and it’s full of errors and the author won’t share the data or be open about the analysis? appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
Authority figures in psychology spread more happy talk, still don’t get the point that much of the published, celebrated, and publicized work in their field is no good (Part 2)
Part 1 was here. And here’s Part 2. Jordan Anaya reports: Uli Schimmack posted this on facebook and twitter. I [Anaya] was annoyed to see that it mentions “a handful” of unreliable findings, and points the finger at fraud as the cause. But then I was shocked to see the 85% number for the Many […]
The post Authority figures in psychology spread more happy talk, still don’t get the point that much of the published, celebrated, and publicized work in their field is no good (Part 2) appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.