gwern comments on Open Thread, April 27-May 4, 2014 - Less Wrong
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Turns out I am overoptimistic and in some cases people have done just that: interpreted a failure to reject the null (due to insufficient power, despite being evidence for an effect) as disproving the alternative in a series of studies which all point the same way, only changing their minds when an individually big enough study comes out. Hauer says this is exactly what happened with a series of studies on traffic mortalities.
(As if driving didn't terrify me enough, now I realize traffic laws and road safety designs are being engineered by vulgarized NHST practitioners who apparently don't know how to patch the paradigm up with emphasis on power or meta-analysis.)