At 08:37 AM 4/13/00 -0400, Art Kendall wrote:
>in the "harder to do" sciences it is common to distinguish an experiment
>from a
>quasi-experiment.
>
>Part of the difficulty of these fields is that we can not (or ethically may
>not) manipulate many independent variables. Therefore we lose the opportunity
>to assert "et ceteris paribus" "everything else being equal" that is part of a
>true experiment.
there goes medicine!
if this is a real distinction ... then, instead of having 'hard' and 'soft'
sciences ... we should think of it as:
hard and soft investigations ...
but, if we follow this to some logical conclusion ... this could be
rephrased as meaning ...
situations where you have essentially complete control over variable
manipulation .... = situations where you can establish 'the truth' (in
terms of the impacts of these variables on things) ... but, this is
precisely what many have been arguing on the list about that hypothesis
testing ... statistical significance testing that is ... is in NO position
to help you assert 'the truth' ... truth is a metaphysical notion ... not
statistical
in essence, if 'the truth' is a laudable goal and, for some reason we can
'learn of it' through 'scientific investigation' ... then it is NOT
significance testing that leads us to it ... ... rather it is the DESIGN of
investigations that is the key ...
===========================================================================
This list is open to everyone. Occasionally, less thoughtful
people send inappropriate messages. Please DO NOT COMPLAIN TO
THE POSTMASTER about these messages because the postmaster has no
way of controlling them, and excessive complaints will result in
termination of the list.
For information about this list, including information about the
problem of inappropriate messages and information about how to
unsubscribe, please see the web page at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
===========================================================================
