P-hacking involves manipulating data or statistical analysis to produce false statistically significant results.Data Dredging: Data dredging is the failure to acknowledge that the correlation was in fact the result of chance. This practice can lead to an inflated rate of Type I errors, where a true null hypothesis is incorrectly rejected. The issue with p-hacking is its disregard for the principles of hypothesis testing. The critical threshold often lies at 0.05, below which results are statistically significant. P-hacking refers to the manipulation of ‘p-values,’ a standard statistical measure that tests the hypothesis probability given the observed data. It occurs when researchers consciously or unconsciously manipulate their data or statistical analyses until non-significant results become significant. Grenades might lead to fruitful paths for future research, but you can't trust data gathered that way.P-hacking, also known as data dredging or data snooping, is a controversial practice in statistics and data analysis that undermines the validity of research findings. Maybe you only killed the fish that were coming up for air at the time, and most of the population was deep under water. Maybe the fish were moving from one favorite spot to another when you bombed them. You still need to go drop a line and test your hypothesis. If nobody knows anything about where to find fish, a grenade might be in order, but you cannot stop there or draw any conclusions about the habits of fish from the results. However, his after-the-fact explanation of why they were where they were should be taken with a grain of salt, and he sure as hell had better not pretend he didn't use a grenade. If you get some fish, that demonstrates that he knows a thing or two about fishing. Guide 1 is testing a specific, pointed hypothesis. He rows the boat over to where the big ones floated to the surface, explaining how he knew exactly where the big ones were the whole time. You drop your line there, and sure enough, you catch big fish.įishing guide number 2 throws a hand grenade into the lake and kills everything. Fishing guide number 1 tells you that based on the depth, currents, and water temperature, we should expect to find the big fish at this spot if you use this bait. P values are just mathematical convention, and they don't mean much without some sort of prior plausibility.
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