Long but worth a read! A large part of why I hate journalists. It explains exactly why you keep getting conflicting dietary recommendations. Now, extrapolate that to fields like economy, engineering…

I’ve seen people do this unknowingly because they don’t understand statistics. I’ve also seen it coupled with the statistical bias you get where you start an experiment to prove a thesis and continue finding errors in your experiment until you get the expected result, at which point you stop looking for mitsakes. Spoiler: that experiment will have errors as well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or published a single paper without errors in the central result.

http://ift.tt/1QaGGY8