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There's probably some truth to this. But if statisticians weren't able to convince the academic world that arbitrarily setting a "statistical significance" thre

There's probably some truth to this. But if statisticians weren't able to convince the academic world that arbitrarily setting a "statistical significance" threshold is a gross misuse of statistics, then what good are they? It would be like MDs failing to convince the rest of the medical community that bloodletting isn't a universal cure for whatever the hell ails you.

smallnamespace 8y ago
Responsibility in communication is a two-way street, and also depends on incentives and relative power. - Are security researchers grossly incompetent for failing to convince the IT industry to adopt best practices? - Are voters in democracies grossly incompetent for failing to police their politicians and keep them honest? - Are media outlets grossly incompetent for not squeezing out 'fake news', whatever your definition? - Are epidemiologists and public health officials grossly incompetent for not convincing anti-vaxxers of their foolishness? Anytime there is a breakdown in communications, both the listener and the speaker should probably shoulder some of it.
Bromskloss 8y ago
> statisticians weren't able to convince the academic world that arbitrarily setting a "statistical significance" threshold is a gross misuse of statistics What would the proper use of statistics be? I believe it is to produce a Bayesian posterior probability distribution, but that wouldn't be the opinion of a frequentist.