Richard_Hollerith2 comments on Beautiful Probability - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 January 2008 07:19AM

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Comment author: Richard_Hollerith2 14 January 2008 04:28:46PM 0 points [-]

It is not completely unreasonable to believe that the big problem in medical research is not a lack of data or a lack of efficient statistical procedures to translate the data into conclusions, but rather the domination of the process by clever arguers. The old-fashioned procedure seems to penalize clever arguers. Although it is of course regrettable that the penalization is an accidental side effect of a misunderstanding of math, the old-fashioned procedure might in fact work better than a procedure whose sole objective is to squeeze as much knowledge from the data as possible.