Gordon_Rae comments on How Many LHC Failures Is Too Many? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 September 2008 09:38PM

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Comment author: Gordon_Rae 21 September 2008 11:31:41PM 0 points [-]

If you're conducting an experiment to test a hypothesis, the first thing you have to do is set up the apparatus. If you don't set up the apparatus so it produces data, you haven't tested anything. Just like if you try to take a urine sample, and the subject can't pee. The experiment has failed to produce data, not the same as the data failing to prove the hypothesis.