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How Much Power Does the Average Social Science Study Have? Less Than You Think

[Excerpts taken from the blog, “No, average statistical power is not as high as you think: Tracing a statistical error as it spreads through the literature”, by Andrew Gelman, posted at Statistical Modelling] “I was reading this recently published article by Sakaluk…

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IN THE NEWS: Wired (November 26, 2019)

[Excerpts taken from the article, “We’re All ‘P-Hacking’ Now” by Christie Aschwanden, publised in Wired] “It’s got an entry in the Urban Dictionary, been discussed on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, scored a wink from Cards Against Humanity, and now it’s been featured…

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IN THE NEWS: Reason (October 22, 2019)

[Excerpts taken from the article “A Famous Study Found That Blind Auditions Reduced Sexism in the Orchestra. Or Did It?” by Robby Soave, published in Reason Magazine] “One of the best-known scientific studies to posit that implicit bias—the idea that…

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Down With Confidence Intervals. Up With Uncertainty Intervals? Compatibility Intervals?

[Excerpts taken from the article “Are confidence intervals better termed ‘uncertainty intervals’?” by Andrew Gelman and Sander Greenland, published in the BMJ.] Are confidence intervals better termed “uncertainty intervals?” Yes—Andrew Gelman “Confidence intervals can be a useful summary in model…

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Disagreeing With Disagreeing About Abandoning Statistical Significance

[From the preprint “Abandoning statistical significance is both sensible and practical” by Valentin Amrhein, Andrew Gelman, Sander Greenland, and Blakely McShane, available at PeerJ Preprints] “Dr Ioannidis writes against our proposals to abandon statistical significance…” “…we disagree that a statistical…

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“Retire Statistical Significance”: A Call to Join the Discussion

[From the blog “‘Retire Statistical Significance’: The discussion” by Andrew Gelman, posted at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science] “So, the paper by Valentin Amrhein, Sander Greenland, and Blake McShane that we discussed a few weeks ago has just appeared online as…

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Replications Can Lessen the Pressure To Get It Right the First Time — And That Can Be a Good Thing

[From the blog “(back to basics:) How is statistics relevant to scientific discovery?” by Andrew Gelman, posted at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science] “If we are discouraged from criticizing published work—or if our criticism elicits pushback and attacks…

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The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: A Personal Example From the Authors?

[From the blog entitled “Oh, I hate it when work is criticized (or, in this case, fails in attempted replications) and then the original researchers don’t even consider the possibility that maybe in their original work they were inadvertently just…

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IN THE NEWS: New York Times (November 19, 2018)

[From the article, “Essay: The Experiments Are Fascinating. But Nobody Can Repeat Them” by Andrew Gelman, published in The New York Times] “At this point, it is hardly a surprise to learn that even top scientific journals publish a lot…

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M Is For Pizza

[From the blog ““Tweeking”: The big problem is not where you think it is” by Andrew Gelman, posted at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science] “In her recent article about pizzagate, Stephanie Lee included this hilarious email from Brian Wansink, the…

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