(2017-10-28, 08:20 AM)Chris Wrote: OK. I had assumed that everyone who was interested had read more than enough about this already - and enough not to be misled by further nonsense from fls, but evidently not....
I'm glad you posted that, Chris. Sums things up nicely.
Not being a mathemtical whizz, I can't contribute much to the discussion, but check this out:
It's been "proven" that something like the Higgs boson exists because of high sigmas (5-6) despite the minuscule effect size, on account of the statistical power of gathering data from "gazillions" of particle interactions. It'd be interesting to see whether FLS would accept this (not that interesting, mind, because I have her on ignore -- she bores me to death with her constant nitpicking), or whether she reserves her "scepticism" only for psi phenomena.
Speaking personally, I regard statistics with grave doubt. If something is deemed to exist only because statistics says so, then in my mind there's always a degree of doubt whether it does or not. The arguments still rage about the Higgs boson, Nobel prizes notwithstanding.