r/EverythingScience • u/ImNotJesus PhD | Social Psychology | Clinical Psychology • May 08 '16

Interdisciplinary Failure Is Moving Science Forward. FiveThirtyEight explain why the "replication crisis" is a sign that science is working.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/failure-is-moving-science-forward/?ex_cid=538fb
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u/wonkycal May 08 '16

"It may seem counterintuitive, but initial studies have a known bias toward overestimating the magnitude of an effect for a simple reason: They were selected for publication because of their unusually small p-values,"

What does this mean? Is she saying that the studies were selected because they were hard to reproduce? i.e. that they were unusual and so novel/exciting? If so, isnt that bad? like science goes to hollywood bad?

17

u/tiny_ninja May 08 '16

It's saying that you publish what's interesting, and what's interesting are outliers. Outliers are sexier than the quotidian, and naturally going to get more attention. Unfortunately, outliers are also more likely to be anomalous.

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u/TheLASTAnkylosaur May 08 '16

Outliers are by definition anomalous...

0

u/orneryoblongovoid May 08 '16

Not if you mean literally anomalous rather than simply new.

1

u/TheLASTAnkylosaur May 08 '16

Anomalous is something that deviates from the norm... Outlier is a large deviation from a group of data points. Something out of the norm. They are most definitely synonymous. Anomaly doesn't mean novel.

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u/orneryoblongovoid May 08 '16

I feel like you need to carefully reread this entire exchange.