I admit that I am still not quite sure what a “Bayesian” is as opposed to and “Old style” statistician (though I am very familiar with Bayes theorem, prior probabilities, likelihood ratios, etc).
That being said, the example at the beginning of the post is a great example of “after the fact” reasoning. If researcher number #2 had required 1,000 trials, then you could say that our interpretation of his results are the same as, say, “researcher #3″ who set out to have 1,000 trials no matter how many cures were observed. Since (I would imagine) we would all agree that the conclusion of researcher #3′s results are the same (if not stronger) than researcher #1′s, than one must come to the conclusion that the interpretation of researcher #1′s results are the same as researcher #2′s, REGARDLESS of how many trial is takes researcher #2 to get his desired results. And (again, I think) we can all agree that just isn’t the case.
I would also like to second Elver’s comment above; it is another example of “after the fact” reasoning.
Sort of like shooting, and declaring whatever you hit to be your target.
I admit that I am still not quite sure what a “Bayesian” is as opposed to and “Old style” statistician (though I am very familiar with Bayes theorem, prior probabilities, likelihood ratios, etc).
That being said, the example at the beginning of the post is a great example of “after the fact” reasoning. If researcher number #2 had required 1,000 trials, then you could say that our interpretation of his results are the same as, say, “researcher #3″ who set out to have 1,000 trials no matter how many cures were observed. Since (I would imagine) we would all agree that the conclusion of researcher #3′s results are the same (if not stronger) than researcher #1′s, than one must come to the conclusion that the interpretation of researcher #1′s results are the same as researcher #2′s, REGARDLESS of how many trial is takes researcher #2 to get his desired results. And (again, I think) we can all agree that just isn’t the case.
I would also like to second Elver’s comment above; it is another example of “after the fact” reasoning.
Sort of like shooting, and declaring whatever you hit to be your target.