mattnewport comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: RobinZ 11 March 2010 05:25PM

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Comment author: mattnewport 17 March 2010 10:14:36PM 4 points [-]

I haven't seen this posted yet and it seems it might be of interest, from a link on Hacker News:

Odds Are, It's Wrong

Science fails to face the shortcomings of statistics

For better or for worse, science has long been married to mathematics. Generally it has been for the better. Especially since the days of Galileo and Newton, math has nurtured science. Rigorous mathematical methods have secured science’s fidelity to fact and conferred a timeless reliability to its findings.

During the past century, though, a mutant form of math has deflected science’s heart from the modes of calculation that had long served so faithfully. Science was seduced by statistics, the math rooted in the same principles that guarantee profits for Las Vegas casinos. Supposedly, the proper use of statistics makes relying on scientific results a safe bet. But in practice, widespread misuse of statistical methods makes science more like a crapshoot.

Follow the link for the full article, there's even mention of Bayes' Theorem.