Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes • Hacker News Board

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#191

Post by ithkuil » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 3:15 AM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #159

aftbit wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on the sea level, doesn't it? Even islands are connected to the rest of the world.

Maybe nothing can be an island in a metaphorical sense, but literal islands are possible?

Well, by definition the island metaphor is about the isolation that islands provide.

So surely metaphorical islands are likelier to preserve the property of being islands even if the physical ones turn out to be much more fuzzy.

GP was clearly mixing metaphor and real to create an effect. "Nothing is really an island" -> "not even real islands are so isolated as it may seem".

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#192

Post by whimsicalism » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 3:41 AM UTC

nearbuy wrote: post #158

mjhay wrote: post #57

I think it's telling that none of the authors are geophysicists, and they definitely aren't statisticians either. The causality they're claiming just does not have any physical plausibility. > Dr. Homola states, “In the scientific world, it is accepted that a discovery can be said to have been made when the statistical confidence level of the corroborating data reaches five sigma, or standard deviations.” > Homola co…

Unless I'm missing something, that statement appears to be correct. They don't say their result isn't erroneous. They say there is statistically only a very tiny chance that the correlation is due to chance. If the correlation is caused by an error in their experiment, their statement is still correct, since the correlation was not due to chance.

Did they hypothesize this effect beforehand? If not, this was a data collection and analysis exercise - not an experiment.

How many comparisons did they do before stumbling on this result? Unreported.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#193

Post by nearbuy » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 3:57 AM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #192

nearbuy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm missing something, that statement appears to be correct. They don't say their result isn't erroneous. They say there is statistically only a very tiny chance that the correlation is due to chance. If the correlation is caused by an error in their experiment, their statement is still correct, since the correlation was not due to chance.

Did they hypothesize this effect beforehand? If not, this was a data collection and analysis exercise - not an experiment. How many comparisons did they do before stumbling on this result? Unreported.

They could be p-hacking, though getting 6 sigmas through p-hacking without outright fraudulent data is actually some pretty impressive level of p-hacking. I'd say it's more likely they either made an error or there really is a correlation.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#194

Post by vba616 » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 4:05 AM UTC

jtc331 wrote: post #188

anigbrowl wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind That seems like an extremely good thing to me. Looking for patterns and then figuring out causality later is a great way to solve real-world problems. Of course you can be led astray if your filters are too open, but if your work is rigorous and you still…

This is literally the definition of p-hacking, and no, it is not a good thing.

>if the correlation holds up and turns out to have some predictive value

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#195

Post by jeffparsons » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 4:07 AM UTC

jtc331 wrote: post #188

anigbrowl wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind That seems like an extremely good thing to me. Looking for patterns and then figuring out causality later is a great way to solve real-world problems. Of course you can be led astray if your filters are too open, but if your work is rigorous and you still…

This is literally the definition of p-hacking, and no, it is not a good thing.

Sincere question from a non-scientist who struggles with the idea of how to make use of existing data without accidentally P-hacking:

Is it still P-hacking if you stumble upon a correlation in the historical record (after stumbling around for a while), call it a hypothesis, and then stick with it long though to gather a statistically significant amount of _new_ data to support it?

More broadly, are there ways to "go on a fishing expedition" that are still scientifically valid?

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#196

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 4:09 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #160

idlewords wrote: post #6

The key claim in the paper ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.12310.pdf ) is that there are detectable changes in cosmic ray activity around 15 days before major seismic events. One posited mechanism is that stuff happens deep in the earth that affects the magnetic field first, and then kicks off some big earthquake. But they don't rule out loopier ideas (like sunspot activity driving changes in the Earth's dynamo that the…

One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind That seems like an extremely good thing to me. Looking for patterns and then figuring out causality later is a great way to solve real-world problems. Of course you can be led astray if your filters are too open, but if your work is rigorous and you still…

[deleted]

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#197

Post by ta988 » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 4:13 AM UTC

jeffparsons wrote: post #195

jtc331 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally the definition of p-hacking, and no, it is not a good thing.

Sincere question from a non-scientist who struggles with the idea of how to make use of existing data without accidentally P-hacking: Is it still P-hacking if you stumble upon a correlation in the historical record (after stumbling around for a while), call it a hypothesis, and then stick with it long though to gather a statistically significant amount of _new_ data to support it? More broadly, are there ways to "go…

As long as you get new data in a way that can falsify your hypothesis that's fine. If you bias your data collection to favor your hypothesis that's still cheating.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#198

Post by ozr » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 4:14 AM UTC

jeffparsons wrote: post #195

jtc331 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally the definition of p-hacking, and no, it is not a good thing.

Sincere question from a non-scientist who struggles with the idea of how to make use of existing data without accidentally P-hacking: Is it still P-hacking if you stumble upon a correlation in the historical record (after stumbling around for a while), call it a hypothesis, and then stick with it long though to gather a statistically significant amount of _new_ data to support it? More broadly, are there ways to "go…

Inarguably. The folks arguing that it's p-hacking aren't taking the next step of treating the correlation as a hypothesis, testing it, and establishing causality.

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#199

Post by vba616 » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 4:16 AM UTC

CleaveIt2Beaver wrote: post #71

jjtheblunt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the phrase is a cliche often used to sound scientific and sometimes by folks unaware, like how description of growth as “exponential” is a cliche used by non-mathematical discussion.

I agree with this. As a layman, I've always understood "orders of magnitude larger" to just mean "way too big" and "exponential" growth to imply "out of control".

x^2 and 2^x manifestly both involve exponents, so I think it's valid - outside math class - to call anything involving accelerating growth "exponential".

Re: Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

#200

Post by idlewords » Sat, Jun 17, 2023, 4:21 AM UTC

mnky9800n wrote: post #152

bryan0 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that troubles me in the paper is that the researchers appear to have gone looking for precursor patterns in an ad hoc way, with no physical theory in mind, just trying different binning techniques and delays until they got a signal. I believe in particle physics this is known as the “look-elsewhere effect”. Basically if look long and hard enough for a pattern, you will eventual find it if your parameter s…

Most of particle physics is people searching for jobs that give meaning to their life. This often biases them against finding results against meaning.

Not to mention that they are themselves made of the particles they study, which ineradicably biases their outlook.