Flaws and fallacies in statistical thinking

[Fallacies that have penetrated into scientific thinking].

Statistical flaws undermine pre-Columbian chicken debate.

Thomson et al. (1) recently used analyses of modern and ancient chicken DNA in an attempt to overturn evidence of Polynesian dispersal of chickens to pre-Columbian South America. There are, however, significant methodological and statistical problems in the analyses carried out by Thomson et al., problems that seriously undermine their conclusions. Thomson et al. (1) conduct an approximate Baye...

Flaws, Fallacies and Facts: Reviewing the Early History of the Lipid and Diet/Heart Hypotheses

The lipid hypothesis of coronary heart disease proposes that a high total cholesterol level has a causative role in coronary heart disease (CHD), specifically in the development of atherosclerosis. It forms the basis for formulating target levels of serum cholesterol and hence the widespread use of statins for lowering cholesterol. An extension of the lipid hypothesis is the diet/heart hypothes...

Psychological Aspects of Budgeting: Planning Fallacies, Failures and Flaws Explained by Social Psychology

Behavioral accounting includes psychological findings into accounting theory to anticipate information recipients’ behavior – it deals with the question of how to design the accounting system to persuade recipients to make economically reasonable decisions. So what about the psychological aspects of the behavior of the deliverers of accounting information? A common area of failure in accounting...

What the F-measure doesn't measure: Features, Flaws, Fallacies and Fixes

The F-measure or F-score is one of the most commonly used " single number " measures in Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, but it is based on a mistake, and the flawed assumptions render it unsuitable for use in most contexts! Fortunately, there are better alternatives… What the F-­‐measure is! F-measure, sometimes known as F-score or (incorrectly) the F 1 ...