ESP and Bayes at the Times

You say you wanted an update on that ESP paper where a professor of psychology “time-reversed” some classic experiments? The New York Times has you covered. Want to see more discussion of null hypotheses and Bayesian analysis in the NYT? Also covered:

Many statisticians say that conventional social-science techniques for analyzing data make an assumption that is disingenuous and ultimately self-deceiving: that researchers know nothing about the probability of the so-called null hypothesis.

The so-called null hypothesis? Take that, Fisher! Oh, there’s more:

Instead, these statisticians prefer a technique called Bayesian analysis, which seeks to determine whether the outcome of a particular experiment “changes the odds that a hypothesis is true”…

Also, the last paragraph of the story seems very relevant:

So far, at least three efforts to replicate the experiments have failed.

Posted by Matt Blackwell at January 5, 2011 10:57 PM