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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews is a leading forum for publishing reviews of books in philosophy. The philosopher of statistics, Prasanta Bandyopadhyay, published a review of my book Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars (2018, CUP)(SIST) in this journal, and I very much appreciate his doing so. Here I excerpt from his review, and respond to a cluster of related criticisms in order to avoid some fundamental misunderstandings of my project. Here’s how he begins:
In this book, Deborah G. Mayo (who has the rare distinction of making an impact on some of the most influential statisticians of our time) delves into issues in philosophy of statistics, philosophy of science, and scientific methodology more thoroughly than in her previous writings. Her reconstruction of the history of statistics, seamless weaving of the issues in the foundations of statistics with the development of twentieth-century philosophy of science, and clear presentation that makes the content accessible to a non-specialist audience constitute a remarkable achievement. Mayo has a unique philosophical perspective which she uses in her study of philosophy of science and current statistical practice.[1]
Bandyopadhyay
I regard this as one of the most important philosophy of science books written in the last 25 years. However, as Mayo herself says, nobody should be immune to critical assessment. This review is written in that spirit; in it I will analyze some of the shortcomings of the book.
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