You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

christopherj comments on The Universal Medical Journal Article Error - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: PhilGoetz 29 April 2014 05:57PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (189)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: christopherj 29 April 2014 10:44:29PM *  0 points [-]

This refereed medical journal article, like many others, made the same mistake as my undergraduate logic students, moving the negation across the quantifier without changing the quantifier. I cannot recall ever seeing a medical journal article prove a negation and not make this mistake when stating its conclusions.

That would be interesting if true. I recommend finding another one, since you sya they're so plentiful. And I also recommend reading it carefully, as the study you chose to make an example of is not the study you were looking for. (If you don't want to change the exemplar study, it may also be of interest what is your prior for "PhilGoetz is right where all of LessWrong is wrong')

The different but related question of the proportion of people (especially scientists, regulators, and legislators) misinterpreting such studies might also be worth looking into. It wouldn't surprise me if people who know better make the same mistake as your logic students, possibly in their subconscious probability sum.