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p=1/2 or E(p)=1/2, or, the boxer vs. the wrestler “Extreme views weakly held”

Wrongly imprisoned man . . .

Posted on September 1, 2005 12:09 PM by Andrew

Linking to an Onion story is really too easy, but I think I’m allowed to do it just this once since it relates to our own research . . .

This entry was posted in Sociology by Andrew. Bookmark the permalink.
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  1. AAAnonymous on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 18, 2026 3:30 PM

    Surely the journals themselves have some responsibilty or role in this all I reason. One thing is that they have…

  2. Chris on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 18, 2026 2:40 PM

    I don’t find your reliance on sarcasm/insinuation very helpful! If you have some meaningful insight why not communicate it? The…

  3. AAAnonymous on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 18, 2026 2:20 PM

    From the paper "Volume incentives originate not at the journals but at the universities themselves, and even more so at…

  4. Kris Hardies on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 18, 2026 1:51 PM

    The point about the incentive structure aligns strongly with the recent editorial from the editors of Organization Science: 'perhaps most…

  5. Daniel Lakeland on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 18, 2026 1:27 PM

    Dale. If you accept my assertion that a kg of aluminum or wheat or a cubic foot of natural gas…

  6. Carlos Ungil on This is how we do modern frequentist statistics: Using fake-data simulation to understand what can happen in a studySeptember 18, 2026 12:41 PM

    > No, you’re missing the point! [...] Had the sample size in the “very attractive” category been 1 million, the…

  7. AAAnonymous on Meritocracy to-morrow and meritocracy yesterday – but never meritocracy to-daySeptember 18, 2026 12:35 PM

    Quote from above: "But that’s not a response to the comment!" But that's not a response to what I wrote…

  8. paul alper on Meritocracy to-morrow and meritocracy yesterday – but never meritocracy to-daySeptember 18, 2026 12:28 PM

    This line actually makes me chuckle: “Howard Lutnick gives top Cantor Fitzgerald jobs to his sons Brandon and Kyle.” Quite…

  9. Anonymous on Meritocracy to-morrow and meritocracy yesterday – but never meritocracy to-daySeptember 18, 2026 11:51 AM

    But that's not a response to the comment! Andrew also said "Again, meritocracy is not the same as merit-based employment.…

  10. Dmitri on Meritocracy to-morrow and meritocracy yesterday – but never meritocracy to-daySeptember 18, 2026 11:14 AM

    "14" said one of the prisoners, and the other inmates laughed.

  11. Dale Lehman on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 18, 2026 11:13 AM

    Anon Contrary to Will's comment, patience is not a virtue I get accused of having. Perhaps in contradiction, I'll respond…

  12. Roy on Meritocracy to-morrow and meritocracy yesterday – but never meritocracy to-daySeptember 18, 2026 11:00 AM

    "“Meritocracy to-morrow” is the appeal of meritocracy as an ideal, happening in the figure so you don’t have to worry…

  13. Anoneuoid on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 18, 2026 10:43 AM

    Decades have been spend refining these imperfect measures. Most of the issues raised on this blog about these measures are…

  14. Daniel Lakeland on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 18, 2026 10:40 AM

    Hi Dale, sorry previous messages were largely written on my phone and finding the reference was not that easy, but…

  15. AAAnonymous on Meritocracy to-morrow and meritocracy yesterday – but never meritocracy to-daySeptember 18, 2026 10:21 AM

    Then I would respond with a link to this comment in that thread: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/06/24/howard-lutnick-gives-top-cantor-fitzgerald-jobs-to-his-sons-brandon-and-kyle-is-a-very-clean-example-of-meritocracy/#comment-2415852 and then we've almost repeated the…

  16. Anonymous on Meritocracy to-morrow and meritocracy yesterday – but never meritocracy to-daySeptember 18, 2026 9:56 AM

    I'd respond with a link to this comment in the thread that you linked: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/06/24/howard-lutnick-gives-top-cantor-fitzgerald-jobs-to-his-sons-brandon-and-kyle-is-a-very-clean-example-of-meritocracy/#comment-2415851 This is probably what he…

  17. Will on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 18, 2026 9:39 AM

    I aspire to have Dale's level of patience. His tolerance for dealing with people who are indulging in blatant motivating…

  18. Dale Lehman on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 18, 2026 9:25 AM

    Anoneuoid I agree that the Breitbart piece used real income - although it was a bit hard to find. The…

  19. AAAnonymous on Meritocracy to-morrow and meritocracy yesterday – but never meritocracy to-daySeptember 18, 2026 9:24 AM

    I will just leave a link to a section of the comment section of a previous blog post about this…

  20. Anoneuoid on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 18, 2026 8:23 AM

    The breitbart article references "real" (ie inflation adjusted) income. You can see the history here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/mehoinusa672n The poverty level mentioned…

  21. Kaiser on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 18, 2026 8:12 AM

    On a related topic, when I had to migrate my blog out of Typepad, I was pleasantly surprised to find…

  22. Chris on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 18, 2026 7:51 AM

    reply to Bob: It seems like there are definite field-dependent differences in the penetration of AI slop and there is…

  23. Andrew on This is how we do modern frequentist statistics: Using fake-data simulation to understand what can happen in a studySeptember 18, 2026 6:05 AM

    P.S. You're right that it's 2972. My 2792 was a typo.

  24. Andrew on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 10:56 PM

    P.S. Just to be clear, it's fine with me that you don't like those particular posts. With 600 posts a…

  25. Andrew on This is how we do modern frequentist statistics: Using fake-data simulation to understand what can happen in a studySeptember 17, 2026 10:33 PM

    Carlos: No, you're missing the point! The only reason they got a proportion of girls as high as 0.56 is…

  26. Dale Lehman on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 17, 2026 7:42 PM

    Daniel I would appreciate it if you would point me to the precise place where BLS says the quality of…

  27. paul alper on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 7:42 PM

    While I am loathed to disagree with someone who lives in my State, I think Dale Lehman is missing the…

  28. AAAnonymous on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 7:26 PM

    Quote from above: "I agree that this blog spends too much time harping on a handful of cases of either…

  29. Carlos Ungil on This is how we do modern frequentist statistics: Using fake-data simulation to understand what can happen in a studySeptember 17, 2026 6:11 PM

    > I don’t know why you say this. [ FACTUAL ] You present a plot with five proportion estimates 0.50,…

  30. Andrew on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 4:41 PM

    Bob: You might regard "harping on a handful of cases of either noise chasing or misconduct or plagiarism" as "petty,"…

  31. Bob Carpenter on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 3:34 PM

    Just for background, I used to work in linguistics and NLP between 1984 and 2010. I love AI and designed…

  32. Peter Dorman on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 3:14 PM

    Yes. In the intervening time since I wrote this, I've come to think that it is the (frequent) social science…

  33. AAAnonymous on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 3:07 PM

    Quote from above: "Exactly what I was thinking about when reading the above comment you replied to: this is literally…

  34. Chris on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 2:49 PM

    Peter Dorman says in the excerpt from the top post: P.S. I’ve wondered why, in more scientific fields, it’s common…

  35. anonymous e mouse on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 2:41 PM

    “P.S. I’ve wondered why, in more scientific fields, it’s common to reference assertions with lots and lots of cites, not…

  36. Jukka on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 2:29 PM

    "Every once in a while you can have a space like our comment section here which facilitates open discussion, but,…

  37. Chris on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 2:23 PM

    Oks has hunted down every linkable negative aspect of science he can lay his hands on and shoved them all…

  38. AAAnonymous on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 2:23 PM

    Quote from above: "All you need to sustain this indefinitely is a smallish clique of people with reasonable academic positions…

  39. Bob Carpenter on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 1:41 PM

    I actually see this all the time in North America, though I'm reluctant to start naming names and subfields and…

  40. Nick on This is how we do modern frequentist statistics: Using fake-data simulation to understand what can happen in a studySeptember 17, 2026 12:51 PM

    Typo: "The other reason is that simulations is that they take effort."

  41. AAAnonymous on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 12:44 PM

    I recently finished writing a manuscript for which I did some searching about some things, one of which concerned journal…

  42. Daniel Lakeland on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 17, 2026 11:57 AM

    Dale, in the mastodon post series Blair Fix points to one of his articles where he compares Census data on…

  43. Dale Lehman on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 17, 2026 11:26 AM

    Anoneuoid You need to be more explicit with me, because I'm not at all sure what you are saying. Where…

  44. Anon on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 11:21 AM

    Something odd has happened to PubPeer lately -- I find that lots of technically correct reasonable comments are no longer…

  45. Anoneuoid on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 17, 2026 10:36 AM

    @Dale Lets discuss an exact case. Just saw this: The official poverty rate dropped 0.5 percentage points to 10.2% last…

  46. Dale Lehman on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 10:21 AM

    What I find interesting is that the explosion of AI slop is a problem because of what, we humans, use…

  47. Raghu Parthasarathy on Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channelSeptember 17, 2026 9:58 AM

    The comment by Ivan Fyodorovich on the Oks article is very good. At least in biological sciences, and I'd add…

  48. Andrew on This is how we do modern frequentist statistics: Using fake-data simulation to understand what can happen in a studySeptember 17, 2026 9:32 AM

    Carlos: I agree that a weighted regression would be better. Or, even better, a hierarchical model with an underlying linear…

  49. Andrew on This is how we do modern frequentist statistics: Using fake-data simulation to understand what can happen in a studySeptember 17, 2026 9:27 AM

    Sam: No 95% or whatever is needed here. As discussed elsewhere in comments, the math makes it clear that the…

  50. Dale Lehman on “Protection from inappropriate influence is a hallmark of scientific integrity” . . . not any more!September 17, 2026 7:27 AM

    Andrew's post has a link to the old and new rules. You may be right about the Census - but…

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