PHYSICS 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Openaccess, Hindsight Bias, Null Hypothesis
Document Summary
Progress in science relies in part on generating hypotheses with existing observations and testing hypotheses with new observations. This distinction between postdiction and prediction is appreciated conceptually but is not respected in practice. Mistaking generation of postdictions with testing of predictions reduces the credibility of research findings. However, ordinary biases in human reasoning,such as hindsight bias, make it hard to avoid this mistake. An effective solution is pre-registration defining the research questions and analysis plan before observing the research outcomes. 1)generating hypotheses based on existing observations post-diction the data are already known and the postdiction is generated to explain why they occurred and. 2)testing those hypotheses by obtaining new observations pre-diction: data are used to confront the possibility that the prediction is wrong. Testing predictions: establishing diagnostic evidence for explanatory claim, assesses the uncertainty of scientific models by observing how well the predictions account for new data. Generating post-dictions: vital for discovery of possibilities not yet considered.
