Friday, December 10, 2010

Testing Scientific Hypotheses v. Statistical Hypothesis Testing

"One of my goals here is to get the research community to understand that there is an alternative hypothesis that should actually be the null hypothesis — the hypothesis that requires remarkable evidence to reject. "                                             
~ Gary Taubes

"Many scientists consider Popper’s idea of falsification to be the only major improvement to the scientific method since Francis Bacon came up with the idea.
Although more complex mathematically than it appears on the surface what Popper’s falsification theory does is describes a way in which hypotheses can be stated with accuracy. Remember, an hypothesis is merely a guess or an assertion that requires testing before it can be said to be viable. Hypotheses can be stated in ways that, although they seem reasonable, can never really be tested. Popper wrote that the only way an hypothesis can be considered a valid hypothesis is if it can be falsified.
What does this mean exactly?

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