> I’ll make one more confession — sometimes I prefer pizza from the greasy pizza joint down the street to pizza with exotic cheeses from a fancy Italian restaurant that costs twice as much. Does this mean the fancy Italian restaurant is a fraud?
No, it means the original studies were right to have a sample large enough to account for one person who's taking a position they wouldn't normally take on that particular day! But what it doesn't do is invalidate the findings of the larger study.
PS: I got to the end of the article thinking the author hadn't made a very convincing case, then I saw that it was Scott Alexander, and my first reaction was "oh, he's smarter than me, I probably didn't read it carefully enough." So, I guess I'm like the lady at the Judgment of Paris who asked for her scorecard back.
No, it means the original studies were right to have a sample large enough to account for one person who's taking a position they wouldn't normally take on that particular day! But what it doesn't do is invalidate the findings of the larger study.
PS: I got to the end of the article thinking the author hadn't made a very convincing case, then I saw that it was Scott Alexander, and my first reaction was "oh, he's smarter than me, I probably didn't read it carefully enough." So, I guess I'm like the lady at the Judgment of Paris who asked for her scorecard back.