Can someone please help me understand NHST?
I study psychology and would like to have a good basics knowledge of relevant statistics. Thank you.
In: 8
You can’t definitively prove most things in science. So rather than proving a hypothesis to be absolutely true you seek to prove that it is more likely to be true than not.
For example, no one has ever proven that smoking absolutely causes cancer, there is always a very slight chance its all just a crazy coincidence. However u can prove that it is far more likely that smoking causes cancer than that smoking has no effect on cancer. Each study showing smokers with higher rates of cancer than non smokers when trying to control for other factors makes the null less likely, and strengthens the alternative hypothesis that smoking causes cancer. Apply this to anything and think of every experiment as an argument made against the null in order to increase support for your alternative hypothesis.
This is also an interesting case historically as the original studies linking smoking and cancer were some of the first truly modern scientific studies using stats. There has actually never been a proper randomized controlled trial on smoking, in part because it would be unethical as we are so certain it causes harm.
Latest Answers