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When logical fallacies of statistics go uncorrected, they are repeated again and again…and again. And so it is with the limb-sawing fallacy I first posted in one of my “Overheard at the Comedy Hour” posts.* It now resides as a comic criticism of significance tests in a paper by Szucs and Ioannidis (posted this week), Here’s their version:
“[P]aradoxically, when we achieve our goal and successfully reject H0 we will actually be left in complete existential vacuum because during the rejection of H0 NHST ‘saws off its own limb’ (Jaynes, 2003; p. 524): If we manage to reject H0then it follows that pr(data or more extreme data|H0) is useless because H0 is not true” (p.15).
Here’s Jaynes (p. 524):
“Suppose we decide that the effect exists; that is, we reject [null hypothesis] H0. Surely, we must also reject probabilities conditional on H0, but then what was the logical justification for the decision? Orthodox logic saws off its own limb.’ “
Ha! Ha! By this reasoning, no hypothetical testing or falsification could ever occur. As soon as H is falsified, the grounds for falsifying disappear! If H: all swans are white, then if I see a black swan, H is falsified. But according to this criticism, we can no longer assume the deduced prediction from H! What? Continue reading
