3 ms·

So run a meta-study upon the results published by a set of authors and double-check to make sure that their results are normally distributed across the p-values

So run a meta-study upon the results published by a set of authors and double-check to make sure that their results are normally distributed across the p-values associated with their studies. These problems are solved problems in the scientific community. Just announce that regular meta-studies will be done, expectations for authors to be normally distributed is published, and publicly show off the meta-study. ------------- In any case, the discussion point you're making is well beyond the high-school level needed for a general education. If someone needs to run their own experiment (A/B testing upon their website) and cannot afford a proper set of tests/statistics, they should instead rely upon high-school level heuristics to design their personal studies. This isn't a level of study about analyzing other people's results and finding flaws in other people's (possibly maliciously seeded) results. This is a heuristic about how to run your own experiments and how to prove something to yourself at a 95% confidence level. If you want to get published in the scientific community, the level of rigor is much higher of course, but no one tries to publish a scientific paper on just a high school education (which is where I was aiming my original comment at).

User23 3y ago
There’s a professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard who only has a high school diploma[1]. Needless to say he’s been published and cited many times over. [1] https://theconversation.com/profiles/louis-liebenberg-1226800 https://theconversation.com/profiles/louis-liebenberg-122680...
- withinboredom 3y ago
  I don't know whether you're mocking them or being supportive of them or just stating a fact. Either way, education level has no bearing on subject knowledge. I know more about how computers, compilers, and software algorithms work than most post-docs and professors that I've run into in those subjects. Am I smarter than them? Nope. Do I know as many fancy big words as them? Nope. Do I care about results and communicating complex topics to normal people? Yep. Do I care more about making the company money than chasing some bug-bear to go on my resume? Yep. I fucking hate school and have no desire to ever go back. I can't put up with the bullshit, so I dropped out; I just never stopped studying and I don't need a piece of paper to affirm that fact.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    To the people downvoting, at least rebuttal.
lisper 3y ago
First, I was specifically responding to this: > I remember my high school AP Psychology teacher mocking p=0.05 as practically meaningless. and trying to explain why the OP's teacher was probably right. Second: > So run a meta-study upon the results published by a set of authors and double-check to make sure that their results are normally distributed across the p-values associated with their studies. That won't work, especially if you only run the meta-study on published results because it is all but impossible to get negative results published. Authors don't need to cherry-pick, the peer-review system does it for them. > These problems are solved problems in the scientific community. No, they aren't. These are social and political problems, not mathematical ones. And the scientific community is pretty bad at solving those. > the discussion point you're making is well beyond the high-school level needed for a general education I strongly disagree. I think everyone needs to understand this so they can approach scientific claims with an appropriate level of skepticism. Understanding how the sausage is made is essential to understanding science. And BTW, I am not some crazy anti-vaxxer climate-change denialist flat-earther. I was an academic researcher for 15 years -- in a STEM field, not psychology, and even that was sufficiently screwed up to make me change my career. I have advocated for science and the scientific method for decades. It's not science that's broken, it's the academic peer-review system, which is essentially unchanged since it was invented in the 19th century. That is what needs to change. And that has nothing to do with math and everything to do with politics and economics.
- trashtester 3y ago
  > It's not science that's broken, it's the academic peer-review system, which is essentially unchanged since it was invented in the 19th century. In my experience, it's not even this. Rather, it is that outside of STEM, very, very few people truly understand hypothesis testing. At least in my experience, even basic concepts, as "falsify the null-hypothesis" is surprisingly hard, even with presumably intelligent people, such as MD's in PHd programmes. They will still tend to believe that a "significant" result is proof of an effect, and often even believe it proves that the effect is causal with the direction they prefer. At some point, stats just becomes a set of arcane conjurations for an entire field. At that point, the field as a whole tends to lose their ability to follow the scientific method and turns into something resembling a cult or clergy.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> and double-check to make sure that their results are normally distributed across the p-values associated with their studies What is the distribution of a set of results over a set of p-values? If you mean that you should check to make sure that the p-values themselves are normally distributed... wouldn't that be wrong? Assuming all hypotheses are false, p-values should be uniformly distributed. Assuming some hypotheses can sometimes be true, there's not a lot you can say about the appropriate distribution of p-values - it would depend on how often hypotheses are correct, and how strong the effects are.

User23 3y ago

There’s a professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard who only has a high school diploma[1]. Needless to say he’s been published and cited many times over. [1] https://theconversation.com/profiles/louis-liebenberg-1226800 https://theconversation.com/profiles/louis-liebenberg-122680...

withinboredom 3y ago
I don't know whether you're mocking them or being supportive of them or just stating a fact. Either way, education level has no bearing on subject knowledge. I know more about how computers, compilers, and software algorithms work than most post-docs and professors that I've run into in those subjects. Am I smarter than them? Nope. Do I know as many fancy big words as them? Nope. Do I care about results and communicating complex topics to normal people? Yep. Do I care more about making the company money than chasing some bug-bear to go on my resume? Yep. I fucking hate school and have no desire to ever go back. I can't put up with the bullshit, so I dropped out; I just never stopped studying and I don't need a piece of paper to affirm that fact.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  To the people downvoting, at least rebuttal.

lisper 3y ago

First, I was specifically responding to this: > I remember my high school AP Psychology teacher mocking p=0.05 as practically meaningless. and trying to explain why the OP's teacher was probably right. Second: > So run a meta-study upon the results published by a set of authors and double-check to make sure that their results are normally distributed across the p-values associated with their studies. That won't work, especially if you only run the meta-study on published results because it is all but impossible to get negative results published. Authors don't need to cherry-pick, the peer-review system does it for them. > These problems are solved problems in the scientific community. No, they aren't. These are social and political problems, not mathematical ones. And the scientific community is pretty bad at solving those. > the discussion point you're making is well beyond the high-school level needed for a general education I strongly disagree. I think everyone needs to understand this so they can approach scientific claims with an appropriate level of skepticism. Understanding how the sausage is made is essential to understanding science. And BTW, I am not some crazy anti-vaxxer climate-change denialist flat-earther. I was an academic researcher for 15 years -- in a STEM field, not psychology, and even that was sufficiently screwed up to make me change my career. I have advocated for science and the scientific method for decades. It's not science that's broken, it's the academic peer-review system, which is essentially unchanged since it was invented in the 19th century. That is what needs to change. And that has nothing to do with math and everything to do with politics and economics.

trashtester 3y ago
> It's not science that's broken, it's the academic peer-review system, which is essentially unchanged since it was invented in the 19th century. In my experience, it's not even this. Rather, it is that outside of STEM, very, very few people truly understand hypothesis testing. At least in my experience, even basic concepts, as "falsify the null-hypothesis" is surprisingly hard, even with presumably intelligent people, such as MD's in PHd programmes. They will still tend to believe that a "significant" result is proof of an effect, and often even believe it proves that the effect is causal with the direction they prefer. At some point, stats just becomes a set of arcane conjurations for an entire field. At that point, the field as a whole tends to lose their ability to follow the scientific method and turns into something resembling a cult or clergy.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> and double-check to make sure that their results are normally distributed across the p-values associated with their studies What is the distribution of a set of results over a set of p-values? If you mean that you should check to make sure that the p-values themselves are normally distributed... wouldn't that be wrong? Assuming all hypotheses are false, p-values should be uniformly distributed. Assuming some hypotheses can sometimes be true, there's not a lot you can say about the appropriate distribution of p-values - it would depend on how often hypotheses are correct, and how strong the effects are.