[SEQ RERUN] Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence
Title: [SEQ RERUN] Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence Tags: sequence_reruns Today’s post, Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence was originally published on 19 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
For good social reasons, we require legal and scientific evidence to be more than just rational evidence. Hearsay is rational evidence, but as legal evidence it would invite abuse. Scientific evidence must be public and reproducible by everyone, because we want a pool of especially reliable beliefs. Thus, Science is about reproducible conditions, not the history of any one experiment.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Hindsight Devalues Science, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
I definitely agree with the belief that the standard of p<.05 should be lowered. That was a useful standard back when experiments were less precise, now it just allows weaker papers through a questionable system.