
J. Cohen's Review of Tukey’s Exploratory Data Analysis [pdf] - drallison
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/50/12/1103.pdf
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drallison
My friend, Joe Marasco <rchimed@comcast.net> recently circulated this
endorsement to a closed list. I thought it might be of interest to the HN
community. Joe writes:

I heartily endorse the attached article. He inveighs against the routine,
mechanical, and mostly mindless misapplication of what he calls NHST, null
hypothesis statistical testing. It does require that you slog through it at
times, but the effort is worthwhile. It’s sort of like having to march a few
miles through thigh-deep fresh snow; when you get to the cabin with the
roaring fire in the hearth, it all makes sense.

I was pleased to see Cohen's laudatory review of Tukey’s _Exploratory Data
Analysis_ , one of those few books that survived my massive library downsizing
of 2015. I hope to get around to reading more of it in the future.

The nonsense Cohen assails here is confined to what he calls the soft
psychological (pseudo)sciences. I am not so confident that the disease has not
metastasized to other less vulnerable targets, medical research in particular.
Of course the consequences of sloppy reporting of results there are ironically
much more severe, given Big Pharma’s thirst for profits and the FDA’s tenuous
grip on the situation.

~~~
joemarasco
Here is a link to the pdf, which can be downloaded without charge:
[http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~maccoun/PP279_Cohen1.pdf](http://ist-
socrates.berkeley.edu/~maccoun/PP279_Cohen1.pdf)

Also, the article is not principally about Tukey’s EDA, which is mentioned as
a counter-example. Rather, it is a critique of what has become quite
fashionable, the art of p-hacking. Although this article is over 20 years old,
it is no less valid than it was when it first appeared.

Thanks.

