On Wednesday, 8 March 2017 at 13:14:19 UTC, XavierAP wrote:
On Wednesday, 8 March 2017 at 12:42:37 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner
wrote:
On Tuesday, 7 March 2017 at 22:07:51 UTC, XavierAP wrote:
Plus statistics can prove nothing -- this logical truth
cannot be overstated.
It's called empirical evidence and it's one of the most
important techniques in science[2] to create foundation for a
hypothesis.
No, mistaking historical data as empirically valid is the most
dangerous scientific mistake. The empirical method requires all
conditions to be controlled, in order for factors to be
isolated, and every experiment to be reproducible.
This is true for controlled experiments like the one I pointed to
and this model works fine for those sciences where controlled
experiments are applicable (e.g. physics).
For (soft) sciences where human behaviour is a factor - and it
usually is one you cannot reliably control - using
quasi-experiments with a high sample size is a generally accepted
practice to accumulate empirical data.
