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A comment on Lung Cancer and the Power of Suggestion. Parent comment

Re:Lung Cancer and the Power of Suggestion by ceejayoz on Sunday February 10, 2013 @01:06PM (#5197177)
> After all, if A & B are correlated, then one of these statements must be true: "A causes B", "B causes A" or "there is something else, C, which causes A and B".

You missed "it's purely coincidence", which is an entirely valid option.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Lung Cancer and the Power of Suggestion by rmc on Sunday February 10, 2013 @01:31PM (#5197276)
You should do enough experiments to be able to state with statistical confidence that it's not a coincidence.
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Re:Lung Cancer and the Power of Suggestion by greenyoda on Sunday February 10, 2013 @05:35PM (#5198280)
The correlation could also be due to a flaw in your experimental design (e.g., something in your lab is contaminating your samples, or the researcher has an unconscious bias that skews measurements in a particular direction), in which case repeating the same experiments will not solve the problem.
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Re:Lung Cancer and the Power of Suggestion by rmc on Monday February 11, 2013 @12:41PM (#5202022)
Sure, there's loads of ways an experiment can be flawed. But also, it might not be flawed. If you're got a good experiment that shows correlation, then it has to be one of the 3 results above.
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Re:Lung Cancer and the Power of Suggestion by ceejayoz on Monday February 11, 2013 @05:16PM (#5203692)
No, it is statistically most likely to be one of the 3 results above. "Has to be" doesn't have much of a place in a statistics discussion. There is a non-zero probability of the correlation being due to chance.
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