Know-Nothing Know-It-All/Quotes: Difference between revisions

As all actual particle physicists would agree, 95% is just an insignificant hint. The hints only become evidence worth discussing when the confidence approaches the 99.7% or 3-sigma level and an effect is only claimed to be discovered when the confidence reaches 99.9999% or 5-sigma. This convention of hard science is no excessively demanding dream. If a new effect is actually there, collecting the 5-sigma evidence takes just slightly (6.25 times) more data than accumulating the 2-sigma evidence. If a 2-sigma hint refuses to grow to 5 sigma for a decade or two, you may be pretty sure that it was a fluke and the effect doesn't exist. And indeed, most effects that are, at one point, observed to be there at the 95% confidence level ultimately go away.

| "[https://motls.blogspot.com/2014/09/brian-coxs-incompetence.html Brian Cox's incompetence]" by '''Luboš Motl''' on ''The Reference Frame'' blog }}

 

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