Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
scientificamerican.com
Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
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Re: Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
#2A very well written article.
Re: Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
#3I think statistics is one of the most misunderstood field of mathematics relative to how much the general person believes he or she knows about it. I know this article was about researchers and not the general public, but I can definitely sympathize with them; I have a MSc in engineering physics and I still have to think three times about a number before I know that all assumptions I have made while calculating it were correct and not biased, and three times more about what this number means and what conclusions I can actually draw from it.
Re: Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
#4Here's the editorial by David Trafimow and Michael Marks explaining the new policy for their journal "Basic and Applied Social Psychology": http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01973533.2015.101...
And here's their concluding paragraph explaining their rationale and objective:
We conclude with one last thought. Some might view
the NHSTP[1] ban as indicating that it will be easier to
publish in BASP, or that less rigorous manuscripts will
be acceptable. This is not so. On the contrary, we
believe that the p Re: Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
#5I think statistics is one of the most misunderstood field of mathematics relative to how much the general person believes he or she knows about it. I know this article was about researchers and not the general public, but I can definitely sympathize with them; I have a MSc in engineering physics and I still have to think three times about a number before I know that all assumptions I have made while calculating it we…
Absolutely. If I were in charge of curriculum development for engineers, I'd swap out a couple of semesters of math that the student will never see again unless they end up working on EM simulators, and replace it with statistics course(s) that will be helpful throughout their careers.
Unfortunately there's a lot of coursework in engineering that amounts to institutionalized hazing. The professor had to do it, so by the hallowed beard of Frobenius, the students have to do it too...
Re: Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
#6There has been plenty of debate about this in other fields as well. Deirdre McCloskey and Stephen Ziliak have a particularly well-written paper titled "The Cult of Statistical Significance" on this very topic. Their main point is that statistical significance is meaningless without a discussion of magnitudes.
Re: Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
#7Despite the present day predominance of the life sciences (including psychology), I wish articles would not describe the p-value crisis as a crisis of "science". Physical scientists rarely use p-values. There are lots of other ways to establish the robustness of a result, most importantly, not relying on just one tool.
Re: Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
#8Here's the editorial by David Trafimow and Michael Marks explaining the new policy for their journal "Basic and Applied Social Psychology": http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01973533.2015.101... And here's their concluding paragraph explaining their rationale and objective: We conclude with one last thought. Some might view the NHSTP[1] ban as indicating that it will be easier to publish in BASP, or that les…
And what should be used as an alternative? There is no reason to believe banning p value would result in improved research quality. Desperate researchers will just find another technique to game.
Re: Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
#9I think statistics is one of the most misunderstood field of mathematics relative to how much the general person believes he or she knows about it. I know this article was about researchers and not the general public, but I can definitely sympathize with them; I have a MSc in engineering physics and I still have to think three times about a number before I know that all assumptions I have made while calculating it we…
Absolutely. If I were in charge of curriculum development for engineers, I'd swap out a couple of semesters of math that the student will never see again unless they end up working on EM simulators, and replace it with statistics course(s) that will be helpful throughout their careers. Unfortunately there's a lot of coursework in engineering that amounts to institutionalized hazing. The professor had to do it, so by…
They combined the probability and statistics courses in my undergrad engineering program. When I went through the program, they were separate and I found the statistics course to be excellent. Unfortunately, they had already made it less valuable before they were combined because they had dropped other components of the course. They combined the courses so they could spend more time on the introductory math courses.
Before, there was a grade 13 that provided a better math foundation for university, but since that was eliminated, they needed to spend more time on the math as students were doing consistently poor. Things have improved in the math courses since the change, though.
The other reason why they combined the courses was that we were the only engineering department that had separate courses for them. But, we were also the only engineering department with machine learning and pattern recognition courses as well. Now, those courses need to spend more time at the beginning covering the material lost from combining the courses.
Re: Scientists Perturbed by Loss of Stat Tool to Sift Research Fudge from Fact
#10Here's the editorial by David Trafimow and Michael Marks explaining the new policy for their journal "Basic and Applied Social Psychology": http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01973533.2015.101... And here's their concluding paragraph explaining their rationale and objective: We conclude with one last thought. Some might view the NHSTP[1] ban as indicating that it will be easier to publish in BASP, or that les…
And what should be used as an alternative? There is no reason to believe banning p value would result in improved research quality. Desperate researchers will just find another technique to game.
My thinking is that there should be no alternative to NHSTP that would function as a crutch, that if something else were to arise in an attempt to take the place of NHSTP, it will not be gain as much prominence among researchers. Are there any other scalar statistical numbers in statistics that can function the same as p-values? That is:
1. Can the general public see it as jargon? The general public see p-value, and they think 'oh, those scientists probably know what that really means, just tell me if that number should be big or small to be meaningful'
2. Can a headline be made of it? ( Hypothesis X shown to be 'statistically significant' because a journalist saw the p-value result)
3. If a colleague does not understand it, can you make fun of them for not understanding such a 'simple' concept?