In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
dennis roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>At 10:06 PM 10/16/00 +0000, Peter Lewycky wrote:
>>It happens all the time in medicine. If I can show a p value 0.05 or
>>less the researchers are delighted. Whenever I can't produce a p of 0.05
>>or less they start looking for another statistician and will even
>>withhold a paper from publication.
>gee ... this is too bad ... someone has sold all these folks in medicine a
>bill of goods ...
>some possibilities are:
>1. those in medicine are not really taking any statistics courses
>2. those in medicine are not really reading statistical material very carefully
>3. those in medicine have had a bad run of luck WHEN taking data analysis
>courses
It is not just in medicine, but you will find that most of
those who have taken a statistical methods course will have
this attitude. Furthermore, it is hard for most to get
over this. Many never do.
Another in this line is the belief that things should be
normally distributed. Some investigators designed an IQ
test with a report ceiling, because they did not have
enough subjects to use the normal distribution to evaluate
higher IQs. This IS what people in the applied fields have
"learned" in their statistics courses.
--
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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