Junk Science (as first coined).* Have you ever noticed in wranglings over evidence-based policy that it’s always one side that’s politicizing the evidence—the side whose policy one doesn’t like? The evidence on the near side, or your side, however, is solid science. Let’s call those who first coined the term “junk science” Group 1. For […]
Professor Larry Laudan Lecturer in Law and Philosophy University of Texas at Austin “When the ‘Not-Guilty’ Falsely Pass for Innocent” by Larry Laudan While it is a belief deeply ingrained in the legal community (and among the public) that false negatives are much more common than false positives (a 10:1 ratio being the preferred guess), […]
Imagine. The New York Times reported a few days ago that the FBI erroneously identified criminals 96% of the time based on probability assessments using forensic hair samples (up until 2000). Sometimes the hair wasn’t even human, it might have come from a dog, a cat or a fur coat! I posted on the unreliability of hair forensics a few […]
We constantly hear that procedures of inference are inescapably subjective because of the latitude of human judgment as it bears on the collection, modeling, and interpretation of data. But this is seriously equivocal: Being the product of a human subject is hardly the same as being subjective, at least not in the sense we are […]
Stephen Senn Head, Methodology and Statistics Group, Competence Center for Methodology and Statistics (CCMS), Luxembourg Is Pooling Fooling? ‘And take the case of a man who is ill. I call two physicians: they differ in opinion. I am not to lie down, and die between them: I must do something.’ Samuel Johnson, in Boswell’s A Journal […]
So it turns out there was an internal whistleblower in the Potti scandal at Duke after all (despite denials by the Duke researchers involved ). It was a medical student Brad Perez. It’s in the Jan. 9, 2015 Cancer Letter*. Ever since my first post on Potti last May (part 1), I’ve received various e-mails and phone calls from people wishing to confide their inside […]
Given the daily thrashing significance tests receive because of how preposterously easy it is claimed to satisfy the .05 significance level requirement, it’s surprising[i] to hear Naomi Oreskes blaming the .05 standard as demanding too high a burden of proof for accepting climate change. “Playing Dumb on Climate Change,” N.Y. Times Sunday Rev. at 2 (Jan. 4, 2015). Is there anything […]
S. Stanley Young, PhD Assistant Director Bioinformatics National Institute of Statistical Sciences Research Triangle Park, NC Are there mortality co-benefits to the Clean Power Plan? It depends. Some years ago, I listened to a series of lectures on finance. The professor would ask a rhetorical question, pause to give you some time to think, […]
Stephen Senn Head, Methodology and Statistics Group Competence Center for Methodology and Statistics (CCMS) Luxembourg Responder despondency: myths of personalized medicine The road to drug development destruction is paved with good intentions. The 2013 FDA report, Paving the Way for Personalized Medicine has an encouraging and enthusiastic foreword from Commissioner Hamburg and plenty of extremely […]
Here are the slides from my presentation (May 17) at the Scientism workshop in NYC. (They’re sketchy since we were trying for 25-30 minutes.) Below them are some mini notes on some of the talks. Now for my informal notes. Here’s a link to the Speaker abstracts;the presentations may now be found at the conference site here. Comments, questions, and corrections […]
