A system can be no better than the output of its sensory organs.....RO/RS=CF, worse still, a sytem disconnect from its input functions certainly fails.
From my other thread, covering the reliability of published OUTPUT.To: dvdw© who wrote (268) 3/18/2010 10:15:38 AM
From: dvdw© of 274
Odds Are, It's Wrong (rampant statistical problems in science)
Science News ^ | March 27th, 2010 issue | Tom Siegfried
Posted on Thursday, March 18, 2010 8:23:31 AM by Mount Athos
Supposedly, the proper use of statistics makes relying on scientific results a safe bet. But in practice, widespread misuse of statistical methods makes science more like a crapshoot.
It’s science’s dirtiest secret: The “scientific method” of testing hypotheses by statistical analysis stands on a flimsy foundation. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing.
Experts in the math of probability and statistics are well aware of these problems and have for decades expressed concern about them in major journals.
“There is increasing concern,” declared epidemiologist John Ioannidis in a highly cited 2005 paper in PLoS Medicine, “that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims.”
In 2007, for instance, researchers combing the medical literature found numerous studies linking a total of 85 genetic variants in 70 different genes to acute coronary syndrome. When the researchers compared genetic tests of 811 patients that had the syndrome with a group of 650 that didn’t, only one of the suspect gene variants turned up substantially more often in those with the syndrome — a number to be expected by chance.
How could so many studies be wrong? Because their conclusions relied on “statistical significance.“
“I found that eight or nine of every 10 articles published in the leading journals make the fatal substitution” of equating statistical significance to importance, he said in an interview. Ziliak’s data are documented in the 2008 book The Cult of Statistical Significance, coauthored with Deirdre McCloskey of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
These concerns do not make clinical trials worthless, nor do they render science impotent. Some studies show dramatic effects that don’t require sophisticated statistics to interpret.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ... |
