If “The Purpose of a System is What it Does,” why do some still insist that statistics helps sort out scientific truth? We have a century of evidence to the contrary. https://www.argmin.net/p/what-is-statistics-purpose
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Great essay! You ask, "What are the grand discoveries that we wouldn’t have made without an understanding of null hypothesis testing?" Would the discovery of the Higgs boson count? As I understand it, the transition from "cool theory" to "Nobel prize" hinged on a p-value.
I suppose the converse question is interesting too: what grand-but-incorrect discoveries would we have made without an understanding of null hypothesis testing?
Here, people love to point to the Women's Health Initiative trial that "proved" hormone replacement therapy was dangerous. But there is still no consensus on the best clinical interpretation of this trial.
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