Statistically speaking, science suffers from an excess of significance. Overeager researchers often tinker too much with the statistical variables of their analysis to coax any meaningful insight from their data sets. “People are messing around with the data to find anything that seems significant, to show they have found something that is new and unusual,” Dr. Ioannidis said.
Back in my undergraduate days, I recall wondering if my experiments had found something significant, then my professors would not have been such hard asses. Most of my time in the library was seeking to find something original to impress. I got more props from my peers than my profs.
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