Classic Posts
Featured Articles Why Science Is Broken: Hillsdale Speech Video & Transcript Now Online The Probability Of A Head In A Coin Flip Is 1, Not 1/2 The Great Global Warming—A.K.A.…
Posted inStatistics
Climate Change Causing Short Peruvians!
Who remembers those crank scientists who wanted to genetically engineer human beings so that they would be sprier and narrower and thus have smaller "carbon footprints"? We don't need 'em!…
Posted inStatistics
First Annual WMBriggs.com Bad Science Award!
This post is one that has been restored after the hacking. All original comments were lost. Announcement In the proud and rarely abused tradition of Honoring Important People, we present…
Posted inStatistics
The Letter The Lancet Wouldn’t Publish
Here's the title of a big new peer-reviewed paper in The Lancet: Effects of long-term exposure to air pollution on natural-cause mortality: an analysis of 22 European cohorts within the…
Posted inStatistics
Exposure To Fracking Reduces Low-Birth-Weight Babies
Shouldn't a peer-reviewed paper which purports to tie chemicals produced in the manufacture of natural gas (fracking etc.) to birth defects actually measure exposure (of fetus carriers, i.e. "mothers") to…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
The Applicability Of Experiments
Every probability problem has the form Pr(Q|E), where Q is the proposition of interest and E the evidence, premises, or "data" probative (or not) of E. Change the evidence, change…
Posted inStatistics
Foreclosures Causing Suicides?
Remember our discussion of the Spurious Correlations website, nicely paired with the Regression Isn't What You Think post? The two keys points of both are the (a) "statistically significant" correlations,…
Posted inStatistics
Exposure to Fast Food Impedes Happiness, Researchers
That don't call it the unhappy meal for nothing. Or, wait... What we have here is yet another instance of scientists claiming to have done something they did not do.…
