Comment on Bayes' rule =/= Bayesian inference

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:48:33 GMT

I'm curious, though, as to what all you are giving up by not talking about priors. In Felsenstein's field - roughly, constructing best estimates of the "tree of life" - you very frequently have prior information which you want to bring to the problem, but of course you don't want to bring in any prior information which is not neutral on the controversial issue that your study is supposed to shed light on.

One of the advantages of a Bayesian methodology is supposed to be the ability to combine information from sources with different qualities and coverages. To what extent are you prevented from doing that if you insist on doing all of your likelihood ratio work behind a "veil of ignorance"?

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