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gwern comments on Open Thread, April 27-May 4, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

0 Post author: NancyLebovitz 27 April 2014 08:34PM

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Comment author: gwern 10 October 2014 02:10:38AM *  0 points [-]

everyone's beliefs radically flip as they go from 'grapes have been refuted and are quack alt medicine!' to 'grapes cure cancer! quick, let's apply to the FDA under a fast track'

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.)