Comment by another_twist

1 day ago

Technical question - they say people felt 23pc less animosity. Assuming their measurements are okay, what would the statistical power of this experiment ? I dont think they report a null hypothesis.

7 comments

another_twist

Reply
bxparks  1 day ago

Can you explain why you wrote '23pc' instead of using the '23%' that was used in the article? It is confusing to me.

I had never seen 'pc' used as a short hand for percent (%) until recently in an article (can't remember where), where they used 'pc' repeatedly. Unfortunately the article was also talking about the 'pence' of money, so I found it impossible to figure out from context whether they were talking about a 'pence' or a 'percent'.

In the US, I have seen 'pct' used instead of '%', but not too frequently. I had never seen 'pc' used until recently.

  • lutusp  1 day ago

    > I had never seen 'pc' used as a short hand for percent (%) until recently in an article (can't remember where), where they used 'pc' repeatedly.

    A couple of possibilities:

       * For plain-text content that might migrate into a Web page (or emanate from a Web page), the special meaning of '%' in that context might motivate some to avoid the character entirely.
   * When typing on a cell phone, one may want to avoid '%' because it often requires shifting to an alternate character set, typing a non-alpha character, then shifting back.

    Still, as you point out, it's confusing.

lutusp  1 day ago

> they say people felt 23pc less animosity. Assuming their measurements are okay, what would the statistical power of this experiment ? I dont think they report a null hypothesis.

It's a psychology study, a study from a field whose results famously fail to be replicated roughly 2/3 of the time, even when they meet the 0.05 P-factor criterion that assures publication.

Also, many modern psychology studies don't have control groups, and don't consider the null hypothesis. Too much trouble.

Also also, a paywalled study funded by taxpayers. Wasn't this practice supposed to have been stopped?

  • another_twist  1 day ago

    The problem is with 0.05 criterion. In particle physics, the hypothesis tests are done two ways with the alternate hypothesis flipped to be the null hypothesis and it has a lower threshold of passing as in - we believe when theres very strong evidence else we dont. Atleast thats my read from the Higgs boson paper - https://higgsml.lal.in2p3.fr/files/2014/04/documentation_v1....

    • lutusp  20 hours ago

      > The problem is with 0.05 criterion.

      That's certainly one problem -- many have argued that it's too easy to meet this evidentiary standard, which explains why so many weak, non-replicable psychology papers get published.

      You comment comparing psychology to physics is apt -- the evidentiary standard in hard science fields is much higher.