[ExI] Why so much published 'science' is wrong.

[rex]

William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> [2015-07-11 16:53]:
>    I estimate that even when you include our very best psychology journals,
>    and only peer-reviewed ones, that about 75% of the studies printed are
>    worthless - unrepeatable, used improper statistics, design, subject
>    assignment, error control and so on.  It's a very old story - no one is
>    interested in doing a simple repeat of an experiment, even when they get
>    astonishing results.  I got some of those while doing my Master's work,
>    and my professor made me do the study ten times before he was convinced
>    that it was reliable (not necessarily valid, just reliable).

> 
>      I can think of a better way.  Instead of the usual approach, if the
>      engineering students took two quarters of calculus (where you use
>      Wolfram’s magic act rather than learn twenty different ways to integrate
>      the kinds of functions you never seen to get in real life) and take
>      three quarters of statistics, where the students use Wolfram again
>      (rather than spending the time on how to calculate all those parameters)
>      then spend their time figuring out how to interpret what the computer
>      gave them.

See tagline.


>      I did some searching and found this whole discussion on reducing
>      calculus education veered off in the wrong direction by about a radian. 
>      A faction took off with the idea of calculus reduction, but presented a
>      weird justification: women and minority students are less likely to pass
>      the calculus series (sheesh) and of course you can’t go on in the
>      sciences without it, so that means fewer women and minorities in the
>      sciences, all because of calculus.  My notion is the reason for calculus
>      reduction would be to make room for more statistics study.  Perhaps the
>      minority argument derailed the notion of statistical education or sent
>      it down the wrong road, damn.

In the paleolithic era I taught math at SDSU. Later, I realized
statistical inference, not calculus, was the future. It's happening,
albeit slowly in human terms.

-rex
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