DEDICATED THREAD: UNDERSTANDING STATISTICS IN SCIENCE RESEARCH Statistics are a mainstay of modern science. All papers are looking for good p-values. So as a layperson, do you know what a p-value is? How do you know if a papers findings are significant? If there is a correlation between two things in a study, does that really mean something? Or did the authors just go on a statistical fishing trip, trying to justify their paper in order to get published? *A must read for everyone! --->Why Most Published Research Findings Are False plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020124 Issues with Statistics in Science: * Over the years, hundreds of published papers have warned that science’s love affair with statistics has spawned countless illegitimate findings. In fact, if you believe what you read in the scientific literature, you shouldn’t believe what you read in the scientific literature. “There is increasing concern,” declared epidemiologist John Ioannidis in a highly cited 2005 paper in PLoS Medicine, “that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims.” https://sciencenews.org/article/odds-are-its-wrong * Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis (see article). A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published research cannot be replicated. economist/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong *Fisher said a low P value merely means that you should reject the null hypothesis; it does not actually tell you how likely the null hypothesis is to be correct. Others interpreted the P value as the likelihood of a false positive: concluding an effect is real when it actually isn’t. Textbook writers merged the contradictory interpretations into a hybrid prescription that psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer calls the “null ritual,” a mindless process for producing data that researchers seldom interpret correctly. Psychology adopted the null ritual early on, and then it spread (like a disease) to many other fields, including biology, economics, and ecology. “People do this in a ritualistic way,” Gigerenzer says. “It’s like compulsive hand washing.” nautil.us/issue/4/the-unlikely/sciences-significant-stats-problem How to Spot and Avoid Stats Errors: *Statistics Done Wrong refsmmat/statistics/ *Reviewers quick guide to common statistical errors in scientific papers cdn.elsevier/assets/pdf_file/0008/110996/reviewers_statistics.pdf cdc.gov/des/consumers/research/understanding_scientific.html Repost over at the GMO-Skepti Forum. https://facebook/groups/GMOSF/permalink/353159251489998/?stream_ref=2
Posted on: Tue, 11 Feb 2014 16:30:45 +0000
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