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Scarcely a good word can be had for statistical significance these days. We are admonished (as if we did not know) that just because a null hypothesis has been ‘rejected’ by some statistical test, it does not mean it is not true and thus it does not follow that significance implies a genuine effect of treatment. Continue reading
Senn
Errorstatistics.com has been extremely fortunate to have contributions by leading medical statistician, Stephen Senn, over many years. Recently, he provided me with a new post that I’m about to put up, but as it builds on an earlier post, I’ll reblog that one first. Following his new post, I’ll share some reflections on the issue.
Stephen Senn
Consultant Statistician
Edinburgh, Scotland
Delta Force
To what extent is clinical relevance relevant?
Inspiration
This note has been inspired by a Twitter exchange with respected scientist and famous blogger David Colquhoun. He queried whether a treatment that had 2/3 of an effect that would be described as clinically relevant could be useful. I was surprised at the question, since I would regard it as being pretty obvious that it could but, on reflection, I realise that things that may seem obvious to some who have worked in drug development may not be obvious to others, and if they are not obvious to others are either in need of a defence or wrong. I don’t think I am wrong and this note is to explain my thinking on the subject. Continue reading
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I gave a talk last week as part of the VT Department of Philosophy’s “brown bag” series. Here’s the blurb:
What is the Philosophy of Statistics? (and how I was drawn to it)
I give an introductory discussion of two key philosophical controversies in statistics in relation to today’s “replication crisis” in science: the role of probability, and the nature of evidence, in error-prone inference. I begin with a simple principle: We don’t have evidence for a claim C if little, if anything, has been done that would have found C false (or specifically flawed), even if it is. Along the way, I sprinkle in some autobiographical reflections.
My slides are at the end of this post: Continue reading
Experts convene to explore new philosophy of statistics field
Error Statistics Philosophy 