Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to earthquakes

Re:Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to ... by jeffparsons on Saturday June 17, 2023 @12:07AM (#36367177)

Sincere question from a non-scientist who struggles with the idea of how to make use of existing data without accidentally P-hacking:

Is it still P-hacking if you stumble upon a correlation in the historical record (after stumbling around for a while), call it a hypothesis, and then stick with it long though to gather a statistically significant amount of _new_ data to support it?

More broadly, are there ways to "go on a fishing expedition" that are still scientifically valid?

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Re:Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to ... by ozr on Saturday June 17, 2023 @12:14AM (#36367212)

Inarguably. The folks arguing that it's p-hacking aren't taking the next step of treating the correlation as a hypothesis, testing it, and establishing causality.

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Re:Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to ... by ta988 on Saturday June 17, 2023 @12:13AM (#36367206)

As long as you get new data in a way that can falsify your hypothesis that's fine. If you bias your data collection to favor your hypothesis that's still cheating.

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Re:Surges of cosmic radiation from space directly linked to ... by jtc331 on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @07:48AM (#36402693)

Yeah, there are valid ways to use the data. Looking at the parent again perhaps I was misreading it; I was responding to the idea that you could find the correlation and just go straight from there.

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