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The cult of statistical significance : how the standard error costs us jobs, justice, and lives / by Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey.
Lippincott Library HB137 .Z55 2008
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Ziliak, Stephen Thomas, 1963-
- Series:
- Economics, cognition, and society
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Economics--Statistical methods.
- Economics.
- Statistics--Social aspects.
- Statistics.
- Statistical hypothesis testing--Social aspects.
- Statistical hypothesis testing.
- Social aspects.
- Physical Description:
- xxiii, 321 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2008]
- Summary:
- The Cult of Statistical Significance shows, field by field, how "statistical significance," a technique that dominates many sciences, has been a huge mistake. The authors find that researchers in a broad spectrum of fields, from agronomy to zoology, employ "testing" that doesn't test and "estimating" that doesn't estimate. The facts will startle the outside reader: how could a group of brilliant scientists wander so far from scientific magnitudes? This study will encourage scientists who want to know how to get the statistical sciences back on track and fulfill their quantitative promise. The book shows for the first time how wide the disaster is, and how bad for science, and it traces the problem to its historical, sociological, and philosophical roots.
- Contents:
- A Significant Problem 1
- 1 Dieting "Significance" and the Case of Vioxx 23
- 2 The Sizeless Stare of Statistical Significance 33
- 3 What the Sizeless Scientists Say in Defense 42
- 4 Better Practice: [beta]-Importance vs. [alpha]-"Significance" 57
- 5 A Lot Can Go Wrong in the Use of Significance Tests in Economics 62
- 6 A Lot Did Go Wrong in the American Economic Review during the 1980s 74
- 7 Is Economic Practice Improving? 79
- 8 How Big Is Big in Economics? 89
- 9 What the Sizeless Stare Costs, Economically Speaking 98
- 10 How Economics Stays That Way: The Textbooks and the Referees 106
- 11 The Not-Boring Rise of Significance in Psychology 123
- 12 Psychometrics Lacks Power 131
- 13 The Psychology of Psychological Significance Testing 140
- 14 Medicine Seeks a Magic Pill 154
- 15 Rothman's Revolt 165
- 16 On Drugs, Disability, and Death 176
- 17 Edgeworth's Significance 187
- 18 "Take 3[sigma] as Definitely Significant": Pearson's Rule 193
- 19 Who Sits on the Egg of Cuculus Canorus? Not Karl Pearson 203
- 20 Gosset: The Fable of the Bee 207
- 21 Fisher: The Fable of the Wasp 214
- 22 How the Wasp Stung the Bee and Took over Some Sciences 227
- 23 Eighty Years of Trained Incapacity: How Such a Thing Could Happen 238
- 24 What to Do 245.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-287) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780472070077
- 047207007X
- 9780472050079
- 0472050079
- OCLC:
- 168717577
- Online:
- Publisher description
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