“Scientific Temper”, What it is!

Parallel Sessions: Scientific Superstitions and Scientific Temper

From prehistoric times, humans have evolved as pattern seeking and storytelling species. While the capacity to find patterns and infer meanings had obvious advantages for survival, the brain is not always successful in distinguishing meaningful and meaningless patterns. In fact, "pattern finding" and "order seeking" mechanisms form the basis for nearly all existing myths, superstitions, cultura...

health communication what it is and what is not

SOAP: What Is It and What Is It Good For?

Patrick Thompson is Director of Architecture at Rogue Wave Software, where he has been involved with SOAP bridging products and in exploring the uses of SOAP and XML protocols for the past year and a half. He is on the W3C XML Protocols working group and is involved in the OMG ́s CORBA/SOAP mapping work. He regularly speaks at industry conferences and is coauthor of the popular book The Elements...

Understanding Heritability: What it is and What it is Not

Copy Abstract: Commentators generally found our exposition of the concept of heritability helpful for psychologists, suggesting that we largely accomplished our primary goal. Many provided supplemental and helpful perspectives on concepts we addressed. A few of the comments indicated that we may not have been completely successful in making clear our secondary goal, which was to outline how her...

P-value: What is and what is not

The misinterpretation and misuse of p-value have been increasing for decades. In March 2016, the American Statistical Association released a statement to warn about the use and interpretation of p-value. In this study, we provided a definition and discussion of p-value and emphasized the importance of its accurate interpretation.