How to explore Scott Alexander's work and his 1500+ blog posts? This unaffiliated fan website lets you sort and search through the whole codex. Enjoy!

See also Top Posts and All Tags.

Minutes:
Blog:
Year:
Show all filters
2 posts found
Apr 06, 2021
acx
14 min 1,954 words 273 comments 67 likes podcast (15 min)
Scott Alexander examines two cases of multiple hypothesis testing problems in medical and social science research, highlighting the complexities in interpreting results. Longer summary
Scott Alexander discusses two cases of multiple hypothesis testing problems. The first involves a Vitamin D study for COVID-19 where a significant difference in blood pressure between groups complicates the interpretation of results. The second case relates to Scott's own study on ambidexterity and authoritarianism, where he questions the applicability of traditional multiple hypothesis testing corrections. He explores the complexities of interpreting multiple tests of the same hypothesis and considers Bayesian approaches, ultimately acknowledging the limits of his statistical knowledge on this seemingly simple question. Shorter summary
Apr 28, 2014
ssc
36 min 4,977 words 197 comments podcast (38 min)
Scott Alexander critiques a meta-analysis supporting psychic phenomena to illustrate flaws in scientific methodology and meta-analysis. Longer summary
Scott Alexander examines a meta-analysis by Daryl Bem that claims to provide strong evidence for psychic phenomena (psi). While Bem's analysis follows many best practices for scientific rigor, Alexander argues it likely suffers from experimenter effects and other biases that can produce false positive results. He uses this to illustrate broader issues with the scientific method and meta-analysis, concluding that even seemingly rigorous studies and meta-analyses can produce incorrect conclusions. This challenges the idea that scientific consensus and meta-analysis are the highest forms of evidence. Shorter summary