This article came out on Monday on our Summer Seminar in Philosophy of Statistics in Virginia Tech News Daily magazine.
October 28, 2019
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From universities around the world, participants in a summer session gathered to discuss the merits of the philosophy of statistics. Co-director Deborah Mayo, left, hosted an evening for them at her home.
1.4, 1.5
In Tour II of this first Excursion of Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars (SIST, 2018, CUP), I pull back the cover on disagreements between experts charged with restoring integrity to today’s statistical practice. Some advised me to wait until later (in the book) to get to this eye-opener. Granted, the full story involves some technical issues, but after many months, I think I arrived at a way to get to the heart of things informally (with a promise of more detailed retracing of steps later on). It was too important not to reveal right away that some of the most popular “reforms” fall down on the job even with respect to our most minimal principle of evidence (you don’t have evidence for a claim if little if anything has been done to probe the ways it can be flawed). Continue reading
1.3
Continue to the third, and last stop of Excursion 1 Tour I of Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars (2018, CUP)–Section 1.3. It would be of interest to ponder if (and how) the current state of play in the stat wars has shifted in just one year. I’ll do so in the comments. Use that space to ask me any questions.
How can a discipline, central to science and to critical thinking, have two methodologies, two logics, two approaches that frequently give substantively different answers to the same problems? … Is complacency in the face of contradiction acceptable for a central discipline of science? (Donald Fraser 2011, p. 329)
We [statisticians] are not blameless … we have not made a concerted professional effort to provide the scientific world with a unified testing methodology. (J. Berger 2003, p. 4)
1.2
Marking one year since the appearance of my book: Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars (2018, CUP), let’s continue to the second stop (1.2) of Excursion 1 Tour 1. It begins on p. 13 with a quote from statistician George Barnard. Assorted reflections will be given in the comments. Ask me any questions pertaining to the Tour.
- I shall be concerned with the foundations of the subject. But in case it should be thought that this means I am not here strongly concerned with practical applications, let me say right away that confusion about the foundations of the subject is responsible, in my opinion, for much of the misuse of the statistics that one meets in fields of application such as medicine, psychology, sociology, economics, and so forth. (George Barnard 1985, p. 2)
This week marks one year since the general availability of my book: Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars (2018, CUP). Here’s how it begins (Excursion 1 Tour 1 (1.1)). Material from the preface is here. I will sporadically give some “one year later” reflections in the comments. I invite readers to ask me any questions pertaining to the Tour.
The journey begins..(1.1)
I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is [beyond] not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. (Feynman 1974/1985, p. 387)
It is easy to lie with statistics. Or so the cliché goes. It is also very difficult to uncover these lies without statistical methods – at least of the right kind. Self- correcting statistical methods are needed, and, with minimal technical fanfare, that’s what I aim to illuminate. Since Darrell Huff wrote How to Lie with Statistics in 1954, ways of lying with statistics are so well worn as to have emerged in reverberating slogans:
Experts convene to explore new philosophy of statistics field
Error Statistics Philosophy 