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Define rigor. In context I suspect you mean something like "treat data as objective." I can go to France and pickup and hold the literal kilogram. U can't do t
by avs733 7y ago
Define rigor.
In context I suspect you mean something like "treat data as objective." I can go to France and pickup and hold the literal kilogram. U can't do that, yet, with people's brains to the level needed for psych measurement.
Personally, I prefer social sciences and epi methods (get economics out of here...) Because they are more transparent about the role of the researcher and the limitations of their data. They don't bluntly trust it...the engineers I work with largely do. They assume data represents truth and is largely without meaningful error.
- thu2111 7y agoI've elaborated here on what I mean here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22737948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22737948 It's not just how much data is trusted (though note: Professor Ferguson at Imperial appears to trust the data coming out of Italy almost completely). It's the whole set of problems.
- avs733 7y agoTrusting data and data being objective >Right now I absolutely want to see papers written by physicists studying COVID-19. Why - because physics is a significantly more rigorous field than epidemiology. I trust the average physicist to have at least slightly higher standards, for instance I trust them to at least pretend to care about statistical uncertainty, and I suspect many of them will upload their source code. I don't expect any of them to email their paper straight to known-friendly newspapers. (from your other post) Is a really...bad idea. Let's not presume knowledge transfers from one discipline to another, that standards look the same, or that Alan Sokal was anything other than an egomaniac.