PT 59 Secton 4 #25 (data interpretations) Forum

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nonamebreakdown

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PT 59 Secton 4 #25 (data interpretations)

Post by nonamebreakdown » Fri Jun 04, 2010 9:09 pm

After narrowing it down to A and B, I chose A. Can anyone explain why B is a necessary assumption while A is not?

sluguy14

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Re: PT 59 Secton 4 #25 (data interpretations)

Post by sluguy14 » Fri Jun 04, 2010 9:23 pm

I'll give it a shot:

So the stimulus is saying that slanted interpretations will have been removed from a paper because other scientists (who do not share the bias of the paper's author) will see the bias and call it out. For this to be true, you have to have scientists that do not all share the same bias. Because if they did all share the same bias, they wouldn't object to that bias in a paper, and the bias would not be removed. This is what B is saying. (For biases to be removed, you have to have reviewers who do not share that bias).

A doesn't have to be true because every scientist can be biased, as long as they don't all hold the same bias. So if a scientist with one bias writes a paper and a scientist with the opposite bias reviews the paper, the bias in the paper will still be recognized and removed.

Hope that makes sense.

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zworykin

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Re: PT 59 Secton 4 #25 (data interpretations)

Post by zworykin » Fri Jun 04, 2010 9:32 pm

Assuming here that you meant section 3...

A) This could be true, but it also could not. Hypothetically, all the scientists doing the reviewing could have biases slanting their interpretations. As long as they do not all have the samebiases as each other and as the author of the paper, they'll all likely balance out in the end and all that will be left behind is the unbiased data. So, this would not be a necessary assumption.
B) This goes right to what I just said above--the scientists can have biases, but they must be different from one another's for the argument to be true. If, in general, they did share the same biases, then the slanted interpretations would often not be removed before publication.


Edit: Teach me to walk away in the middle of typing a response, hahaha. You beat me by almost 10 minutes!

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nonamebreakdown

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Re: PT 59 Secton 3 #25 (data interpretations)

Post by nonamebreakdown » Fri Jun 04, 2010 9:40 pm

Got it. So A says the scientists sometimes don't have biases. B says if they have a bias, then at least some other scientists won't share that bias. A wouldn't be necessary then because even if scientist X does have a bias, maybe scientist Y will not have that same bias and can then be trusted to remove slanted interpretations. B would be necessary because if every scientist has the same bias, no one will remove the slanted interpretations.

Thanks for the help.

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