Error Statistics PhilosophyExcursion 4 Tour I: The Myth of “The Myth of Objectivity”
Blanket slogans such as “all methods are equally objective and subjective” trivialize into oblivion the problem of objectivity. Such cavalier attitudes are at odds with the moves to take back science The goal of this tour is to identify what there is in objectivity that we won’t give up, and shouldn’t. While knowledge gaps leave room for biases and wishful thinking, we regularly come up against data that thwart our expectations and disagree with predictions we try to foist upon the world. This pushback supplies objective constraints on which our critical capacity is built. Supposing an objective method is to supply formal, mechanical, rules to process data is a holdover of a discredited logical positivist philosophy. Discretion in data generation and modeling does not warrant concluding: statistical inference is a matter of subjective belief. It is one thing to talk of our models as objects of belief and quite another to maintain that our task is to model beliefs. For a severe tester, a statistical method’s objectivity requires the ability to audit an inference: check assumptions, pinpoint blame for anomalies, falsify, and directly register how biasing selection effects–hunting, multiple testing and cherry-picking–alter its error probing capacities.
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