News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005). Parent comment

Re:Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005) by kriops on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @10:24PM (#33270158)
There's a big difference between science and social science. Or science and medicine for that matter. They are different domains that require different models of reasoning, which come with their respective sets of limitations.

There's a reason you don't see a crisis in e.g. physics, where their hypotheses are leaps and bounds more testable.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005) by onos on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @10:42PM (#33270249)
This failure rate suggests a reason the social sciences don’t “lead anywhere”: If you try to build a theorem off of two earlier results, but these each only have probability p of being right, then the chance your new theorem is correct goes like p^2. For small p this means deductions based on combining results are very small.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (2005) by onos on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @10:43PM (#33270256)
This failure rate suggests a reason the social sciences don’t “lead anywhere”: If you try to build a theorem off of two earlier results, but these each only have probability p of being right, then the chance your new theorem is correct goes like p^2. For small p this means the chance that a deduction is correct is very small.
[ Parent | on HN ]