Here’s a similar situation: I have read two papers that claimed to explain this situation, in incompatible ways.* So they can’t be both true.** It demonstrates that at least one of them is measuring something wrong. This is an extremely common problem in the social sciences. Once there is an established mystery, many people propose mechanisms to explain the discrepancy. They go out and measure and many find that the effect is just about the right size. It never happens that five people each explain 10% of the gap.
* One paper made a point of surveying prostitutes. The other used lie detectors. But the details are not important.
** Conceivably both effect sizes could be true, if there is yet another effect that cancels one out. Age difference is an effect in the opposite direction. But it is extremely unlikely that the three effects are all the same size.
Of course, if you see a large gap like this, and you come up with a theory that explains only 10% of the gap, that’s not news, so you forget about it. The only people that have something to report are those whose theory could potentially explain the whole gap.
Here’s a similar situation: I have read two papers that claimed to explain this situation, in incompatible ways.* So they can’t be both true.** It demonstrates that at least one of them is measuring something wrong. This is an extremely common problem in the social sciences. Once there is an established mystery, many people propose mechanisms to explain the discrepancy. They go out and measure and many find that the effect is just about the right size. It never happens that five people each explain 10% of the gap.
* One paper made a point of surveying prostitutes. The other used lie detectors. But the details are not important.
** Conceivably both effect sizes could be true, if there is yet another effect that cancels one out. Age difference is an effect in the opposite direction. But it is extremely unlikely that the three effects are all the same size.
Of course, if you see a large gap like this, and you come up with a theory that explains only 10% of the gap, that’s not news, so you forget about it. The only people that have something to report are those whose theory could potentially explain the whole gap.