I have blogged a few days a ago about a study by Kiju Jung that suggested that implicit bias leads people to underestimate the danger of female-named hurricanes. The study used historical data to demonstrate a correlation between femininity and death-toll, and subsequent experiments seemed to show that people indeed estimate hurricanes to be less…
Confirmation bias refers to the well-known phenomenon that we tend to favor information that confirms our beliefs. A while ago, I blogged about potential confirmation bias in statistical analysis, and steps that are taken by large projects such as the LHC to avoid this. Another place where confirmation bias can become relevant for scientific studies…
In an editorial in tomorrow’s issue, Nature announces an initiative to increase reproducibility of research results. They state that “From next month, Nature and the Nature research journals will introduce editorial measures to address the problem by improving the consistency and quality of reporting in life-sciences articles”. The announced measures include To ease the interpretation…
Figure: A classic Blackadder episode on a not completely unrelated subject I’m shamelessly abusing the aftermath of the Stapel affair as an excuse to paint the beginning of this post in novelette colors. Admittedly, the case doesn’t exactly recommend itself for jokes, but the temptation was too great after noting that the combined final reports…
theoretical ecology 