That response boils down to “abusing statistics is okay because other fields are doing it too”. But the fact that other scientific fields are also abusing statistics does not make it okay, because it does not make the conclusions that result from statistical abuses true. The choice of which statistical test to use is not arbitrary, and using the wrong one is as bad as writing down the wrong value for a low-order digit; you can get away with it when the effect size is large, but not here.
(Paraphrased from my reply on that article’s comments section)
Using a different sort of statistical test than Bem used, they re-analyze Bem’s data and they find that, while the results are positive, they are not positive enough to pass the level of “statistical significance.” They conclude that a somewhat larger sample size would be needed to conclude statistical significance using the test they used.
Err, that’s not what they found. Over half the data was not merely “not positive enough”, but literally negative.
Goertzel weighs in.
That response boils down to “abusing statistics is okay because other fields are doing it too”. But the fact that other scientific fields are also abusing statistics does not make it okay, because it does not make the conclusions that result from statistical abuses true. The choice of which statistical test to use is not arbitrary, and using the wrong one is as bad as writing down the wrong value for a low-order digit; you can get away with it when the effect size is large, but not here.
(Paraphrased from my reply on that article’s comments section)
From the blog post:
Err, that’s not what they found. Over half the data was not merely “not positive enough”, but literally negative.