>"a degree in how to do research" Well, here is how I was taught to do research: 1) You come up with a vague idea that one thing should be positively/nega

>"a degree in how to do research" Well, here is how I was taught to do research: 1) You come up with a vague idea that one thing should be positively/negatively correlated with another thing. 2) You measure some proxies for those two things that have only been half-validated, if at all. 3) You make a bunch of dubious statistical assumptions and check whether there was *exactly zero* correlation between the two proxies. 4a) Your sample size was too small relative to the noisiness of the measurements and p>0.05. So you ignore the result. 4b) Your sample size was large enough, or you got lucky and p<0.05. So you publish saying these results support your theory or are counter-intuitive, depending on the direction of the correlation. Please do not think this is at all a critique of my institution/instructors, this is a (the?) method being taught as "science" worldwide. Basically, I have nothing to add that hasn't been said before about that method: http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/meehl1967.pdf http://www.fisme.science.uu.nl/staff/christianb/downloads/me... http://bml.bioe.uic.edu/BML/Stuff/Stuff_files/biologist%20fix%20radio.pdf http://bml.bioe.uic.edu/BML/Stuff/Stuff_files/biologist%20fi...