I wrote:
> > (a) that their discipline ought to be a science;
and Herman Rubin responded:
>
> What is a science? The word means "knowledge".
It did once, and does still in certain uses. I _think_ that everybody
here is aware that the main meaning today is more restricted.
> >Granted, if they did understand statistics, they would not test
hypotheses
> >nearly as often as they do. However, that said, I am not entirely
persuaded
> >that risk calculation is the whole story, either. In many pure research
> >situations, "risk" is just not well defined. What is the risk involved in
> >believing (say) that the universe is closed rather than open?
>
> Both "hypotheses" are highly composite. In a situation
> like this, what is the ADVANTAGE of assuming one rather
> than the other? What action is going to be taken?
>
> There may be a point in investigating the problem, but is
> there one in drawing inferences?
Yes, surely. Let me turn the question around, Herman: your statements
seem to imply that any form of inference designed to do anything but choose
between a set of _actions_ is at least pointless and probably immoral; and
it seems as if you are advocating a philosophy of science from which the
concepts of "fact", "truth", and "falsehood", even in a tentative sense, are
to be eliminated, to be replaced by the concept of "utility". What benefit
is there in this?
As for the risks, I can see definite disadvantages in proposals such as:
> The only general conclusion would be a summary of the likelihood
> function, or a reduction of the data to a point where the loss of
> information is not critical in computing a good approximation to
> the "best" action.
Part of communicating the results of a piece of research is summarizing
them and interpreting them, so that it takes less time to read a scientific
paper than it took to write it. If scientific writing were restricted as
you suggest, the unfortunate person who *did* have to make a decision would
have the following Herculean program to carry out:
First, make up a list of all possible states of the universe;
Then do the data analysis for all relevant research yourself,
using the list assembled in the first step.
In situations where one actually *is* balancing risks, I quite agree
that one should analyze the data accordingly. However, I do not understand
your apparent implicit claim that no question should be asked or answered in
any other situation.
For instance, supposing one is trying to decide whether to add fluoride
to the drinking water of a town. The final decision should be a risk-benefit
analysis. However, the possibility of ever getting to a final decision
depends to a large extent on the fact that other researchers in the past did
*not* end their papers with phrases like "Does fluorine cause an elevated
risk of chicken pox? I'm not going to tell you, but if you plug your
personal risk estimates into this calculation [Box IV] you can decide
whether you think the risk outweighs the benefits."
-Robert Dawson
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