In article <634D48D1362BD311AC7400508B1047DA912E82@EXCHANGE>,
Silvert, Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I would go a little further. It is the perpetuation of the idea that there
>is some truth out there that has to be found that makes statistics and the
>sciences so alienating to mopst people. What we attempt to do is configure
>social facts into a plausible reflection of the physical and social
>environment. In as far as our hypotheses, theories and models are concerned
>we attempt to verify them within an specific environmental context. I find
>that the "truth myth" inhibits people from accepting this idea.
>Just a thought.
This is quite correct. Initially, possibly driven by the
beliefs of the religions that their works were true, the
astronomers, physicists, and chemists believed that they
were producing true models, not merely approximations. And
the best tested one, gravitation, is so close that they
could easily put their errors as observational error, the
effect of unobserved bodies, and the effects of bodies
which could not be taken into account because of
computational problems.
This is the period in which statistical testing also was
started, and they mistook the p-value for the probability
that the theory was false. The manner of thinking
persisted after Laplace showed that this was false.
The truth myth is highly persistent. We have the Delaney
Clause, which requires the FDA to ban any additive "which
has been found to cause cancer in humans or animals".
Now what does this mean? It is unlikely that anything
does not affect the cancer rate.
We do not have the truth, and will not get it. That
point null hypothesis is false. So we need to get off
the tack that we want to accept if it is true, and
reject if it is false.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
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