Stats Central: How to avoid p-hacking, HARKing and other statistical sins

Date: 

Thursday, 18 November 2021 - 2:30pm

Venue: 

Online


Most published research findings are not reproducible ( 'the reproducibility crisis' ). This is a polite way to say these research findings are wrong. A set of related practices called p-hacking or HARKing as well as cherry-picking, fishing expeditions, data dredging or data mining have been named as a major cause of the reproducibility crisis in research.

These practices are incredibly common, and usually carried out by well-meaning researchers wanting to extract as much information from their data as possible, and not realising they are doing the wrong thing. Most worryingly they are often taught in statistics courses. In this seminar I will describe what these practices are, why they lead to bad research, and how to (very easily) avoid them.

The talk will be about 30 minutes long and following by discussion.

Date: Thursday 18 November 2021

Time: 2.30-3.30pm

Speaker: Gordana Popovic, Statistical Consultant, UNSW Stats Central

Location: Online - Register via Eventbrite