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Paul Meehl is responsible for what is probably the most apt explanation for why some areas of science have made more progress than others over the last 70 years or so. Amazingly, he pointed this out in 1967 and it had seemingly no effect on standard practices:
Because physical theories typically predict numerical values, an improvement in ex-perimental precision reduces the tolerance range and hence increases corroborability. In most psychological research, improved power of a statistical design leads to a prior probability approaching ½ of finding a significant difference in the theoretically predicted direction. Hence the corroboration yielded by "success" is very weak, and becomes weaker with increased precision. "Statistical significance" plays a logical role in psychology precisely the reverse of its role in physics. This problem is worsened by certain unhealthy tendencies prevalent among psychologists, such as a premium placed on experimental "cuteness" and a free reliance upon ad hoc explanations to avoid refuation.
Meehl, Paul E. (1967). "Theory-Testing in Psychology and Physics: A Methodological Paradox" (PDF). Philosophy of Science 34 (2): 103–115.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1086%2F288135 . Free here: http://cerco.ups-tlse.fr/pdf0609/Meehl_1967.pdf
There are many science articles posted to this site that fall foul of his critique probably because researchers are not aware of it. In short, this (putatively fatally flawed) research attempts to disprove a null hypothesis rather than a research hypothesis. Videos of some of his lectures are available online:
http://www.psych.umn.edu/meehlvideos.php
Session 7 starting at ~1hr is especially good.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Friday January 22 2016, @11:56PM
In short, this (putatively fatally flawed) research attempts to disprove a null hypothesis rather than a research hypothesis.
To what does "this" refer? Is it referring to some hypothetical piece of research (such as those previously posted to Soylent which the previous paragraph refers to) which makes the mistakes this guy is pointing out?
Without clarification, "this" could be confused to refer to the critiques the guy is making, implying that they are flawed. I'm not even sure this isn't the case.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @12:02AM
To clarify: "this" refers to "many science articles posted to this site that fall foul of his critique". Not that that is any fault of the people submitting and approving the science articles. Researchers love their false null hypotheses these days, it becomes clear why if you think about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @12:33AM
This submission sounds like one of those cases were the submitter is having an imaginary argument with someone and we are only able to hear the submitter's argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @01:22AM
I presented Paul Meehl's argument for your consumption.