Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (18969)	8/26/2010 9:05:22 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Scientific papers that publish experimental results will almost always be followed months or years later by new work that enhances or corrects the results currently published....that is the nature of research. That doesn't mean the original work was wrong. There are no bad results from an experiment....they might not give the result expected but the result will always provide the researcher new information that will point to a new direction for new experiments based on the initial results.... For example, Thomas Edison went through 100's if not thousands of materials in his search for a material that would provide electrical light for more than a few hours....does that mean that those hundreds of experiments were failures? Of course not..what it showed was something that wouldn't do the job and sent the experimenters on a new path with new materials....the results were not failures, in fact they were successful... The paper you posted will no doubt experience the same fate..ie someone will take the authors results and repeat the experiment or review the data another way and come up with a different result and maybe provide an improvement but most likely expose weaknesses in the work.

To: TimF who wrote (18969)	8/26/2010 11:02:50 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 42652

Interesting. " As an editor or referee, don't reject papers that fail to reject the null. " Yeah, like that's gonna happen. Intractable problem, seems to me.

To: TimF who wrote (18969)	8/27/2010 12:52:47 AM
From: i-node	Respond to of 42652

I got a headache.

To: TimF who wrote (18969)	8/27/2010 3:41:03 AM
From: dybdahl	Respond to of 42652

Worst of all, many doctors don't know math or statistics well enough to understand the significance of their findings. Remember, they are doctors, not mathematicians - two studies which seem to favor opposite brain wirings. I have reviewed a couple of papers unofficially and totally sacked one (before planned release) because statistics was misinterpreted. I'm not a statistician, either, but I know enough to see problems in many papers just by reading them. I guess that's why most doctors don't evaluate papers themselves, but do that in groups, or ask a doctor with the right skills.