John Timmer at Ars Technica with a readable take on an important scientific advance:
If you believe The Economist, science is in the midst of a crisis with most of its conclusions failing to stand the test of time. Research fraud is rising, but even studies that were performed properly sometimes can't be reproduced or appear to suffer from bias.
A new analysis suggests a very simple explanation for some of the problems: our statistics are weak. A statistician has figured out how to compare Bayesian statistics to those normally used in scientific tests of significance. By comparing the two, he finds that researchers are often accepting numbers that any good Bayesian would consider to be weak evidence...
@ Is it time to up the statistical standard for scientific results? | Ars Technica:
H/T Carl Zimmer.
See also earlier post
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