Re:Academic success is either a crapshoot or a scam
by bo1024 on Sunday December 24, 2017 @11:01PM
(#16002568)
The difference between testing a null hypothesis vs testing a new, proposed hypothesis does not affect my point about scientific method vs engineering.
Re:Academic success is either a crapshoot or a scam
by nonbel on Monday December 25, 2017 @07:38AM
(#16003908)
Sure, but I'd say there are three things going on here though.
1) Scientific method (what you originally described)
2) NHST (where some default hypothesis is tested)
3) Engineering (where you perform some kind of feat to demonstrate capability)
The problems seem to be with people doing #2 rather than the others.
The studies under question here don't really do that. Physicists often test their hypothesis (eg this satellite should undergo x seconds of time dilation), but in fields like biomedicine or psychology that is extremely rare. Instead they usually test a "null hypothesis" that there is no difference (eg the population mean of the treatment and control groups is the same) when their hypothesis predicts some vague but non-zero difference.