>The impossibility is not due to methodological defects in the current state of scientific practice. It's intrinsic to the world. If you cheat only a bit, and o

>The impossibility is not due to methodological defects in the current state of scientific practice. It's intrinsic to the world. If you cheat only a bit, and only rarely, it might be impossible to detect it statistically. I don't understand what you're saying or maybe I just want to go further. But I would say it's an ill-posed question whether someone's cheating in that sense. They could win a one in a million chance repeatedly over and over on their first try and it wouldn't be proof that they're cheating. It's not even necessarily probable. The probability that they're cheating depends not just on how good their results seem to be but also other things, primarily: on your priors about how likely it is that they would cheat. If a known cheater gets a string of mild good luck it is more indicative of cheating than if a known honest person does. Bayesian reasoning has to be used for this right?