Science and the Shortcomings of Statistics

Kilrah_il writes "The linked article provides a short summary of the problems scientists have with statistics. As an intern, I see it many times: Doctors do lots of research but don't have a clue when it comes to statistics — and in the social science area, it's even worse. From the article: 'Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing.'"

Comments

Not Scientists

[Secret Rabbit]

Ok, so the referenced fields that have problem with stats are both not Sciences. Medicine has no theories that govern the human body. All they do is memorize a bunch of crap and then poke some squishy bits and memorize how it looks and feels when healthy/normal v.s. unhealthy/abnormal. It's really the Engineers, Physicists, Chemists and to a lesser extent (though they are gaining market-share) Biologists, that make the true breakthroughs in Medicine.

And the social "sciences" are just plain an embarrassment when it compares to real Science. Seriously...

People in the real Sciences would have been forced to take enough Mathematics and/or Statistics to be able to properly interpret Statistics. And just as importantly, be able to do proper experiment design (Medicine, I'm looking at you). Then there's the whole not being able to tell the difference between causation and correlation. I could go on.