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

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

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 08 July 2014 04:58:41PM *  -1 points [-]

It is because it is a statistical problem that you can't replace "all" with "most". The F-value threshold was calculated assuming "all", not "most". You'd need a different threshold if you don't mean "all".

Also, the people I am complaining about explicitly use "all" when they interpret medical journal articles in which a test for an effect was failed as having proven that the effect does not exist for any patients.