The most recent brough-ha-ha from one of Mark's posts seems to center on rationality and philosophy, but underlying all the stuff in the "new rationality" is understanding the process of updating our current knowledge with new information through Bayes Theorem (LW calls the process belief updating or bayesian updating). Bayes Theorem is both very useful and very interesting Continue Reading …
Are the majority of published scientific research claims false?
The epistemology vs. epidemiology (Odds Are, It's Wrong - Science News): “There is increasing concern,” declared epidemiologist John Ioannidis in a highly cited 2005 paper in PLoS Medicine, “that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims.” ... Nowhere are the problems with statistics more blatant than in Continue Reading …