Overcoming Bias

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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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Robin Hanson
Aug 1, 2013
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This is our monthly place to discuss relevant topics that have not appeared in recent posts.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter
May 15

I recently angered a family member by questioning an article she said she read in Time magazine. She said the article showed that bilingual/multilingual people are smarter. I immediately started in on a favorite theme of mine, the difference between observational studies and controlled experiments. In recent months, I have had a similar reaction to claims that eating breakfast reduces heart disease in men (Leah Cahil, Harvard) , and that drinking artificially sweetened soft drinks causes obesity.

Am I justified about these in particular, or in general, or neither. Does the power of econometrics negate concerns about bias and confounding? "Cox proportional hazards models" are mentioned in the Cahil study.

Can anyone recommend a good book on the subject of experiments vs. studies in the social sciences?

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Zingram
May 15

Robin, for your book, assume most people reading as having 85 IQ.

You're effing horrible at explaining simple graphs. Explain EVERYTHING. Explain it all! Some of your EM talks were laughably bad. Why? You didn't explain what the graph meant, nor why it is important. I have very intelligent fellows in my circle and even they could not make sense of your gibberish.

Trust me. If I had to guess about your book feedback then "logic feedback" is a lot less than say "what are you talking about?" feedback.

x2 for the blog.

Don't be a candle!

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