[extropy-chat] Re: Damien grants psi evidence

[Brett Paatsch]

Spike writes:

>> ... it's worth noting that Utts is a professor
>> of statistics at UC, Davis, with a PhD in Statistics...
>> 
> 
> Think of it this way: if there are 30,000 statistics and
> math PhDs in the world, it stands to reason that there is
> about a 63% chance that at least one of them would do a
> study which has a 4 sigma outcome by pure chance, which 
> would puzzle the hapless scholar to the point of misleading
> herself.

A good explanation for how researchers can be almost cruelly
mislead (by sheer bad luck), but it doesn't apply in this case.
I'm not implying that Utts is mislead or misleading in other ways
either btw. 

Utts was summarising the results of a field of research and its
findings over time not just conducting a single stand alone
exeriment herself.  

See Damien's earliest post in this thread for the links. 

Brett Paatsch