Rising evidence shows that many psychology studies don’t stand up to added scrutiny. The problem has many scientists worried – but it could also encourage them to up their game.
Some scientists think it’s time to hang up statistical significance.
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Two prestigious journals have suggested abandoning the traditional test of the strength of a study’s results. But a statistician worries that this would make science worse.
John Stockton holds the NBA record for career assists.
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Why are three-pointer shots from the corner more efficient than the ones above the break? The answer: More than 90 percent of corner three-point shots are assisted.
The game is becoming less exciting for fans.
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Sabine Braat, The University of Melbourne y Karen Lamb, Murdoch Children's Research Institute
It’s hard to decide which treatment to choose when trying to quit smoking or lose weight. The term ‘number needed to treat’ could help you decide what is most likely to work.
They said it, but is it true?
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Psychological phenomena like confirmation bias and the Dunning-Kruger effect make it easy for people to fall for deliberate or inadvertent lies in the news.
Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge is the fastest marathon runner, so far.
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Number crunching the winning race time for marathon athletes can tell us when the men are likely to break the two-hour barrier. But what about a target barrier for women marathon runners?
Barry Jenkins’ ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ has been nominated for best adapted screenplay at the 91st Academy Awards.
Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
In January, measles returned to the Pacific Northwest, while Ebola resurged in the Congo. It would take a lot more research for scientists to be able to stop threats like these in their tracks.
It’s cheaper to prevent biological invasions than to react after they happen. But it’s hard to detect invaders while there are still just a few of them. Knowing when and where to look can help.
A plastic waste dump.
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How useful is the information you get from the measure of any thing? That depends on what you chose measure in the first place, and that’s not always clear.
Scientists are facing a reproducibility crisis.
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Kai Zhang, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Science is in a reproducibility crisis. This is driven in part by invalid statistical analyses that happen long after the data are collected – the opposite of how things are traditionally done.
Professor, Future Fellow and Head of Statistics at UNSW, and a Deputy Director of the Australian Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS), UNSW Sydney