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by SirZimzim 1805 days ago
There should be a study on studies being posted to HN. We must be at like 99% of them that get critiqued for being a bad study in one way or another. I would love to see some examples where everyone accepts the study.
1 comments

To be extremely fair to hn: almost all such studies about human behavior, especially those relying on polling, are garbage.

Often, the statistical methods are inappropriate at best, or downright deceiving at worst; there is nominal, if any, understanding about what "controlling for a variable" means, among many other such things. Not to mention that often the methods themselves are highly questionable in their reproducibility, statistics aside.

(Another classic is to point out flaws in generalizations for mice studies and such, but that is, imo, independent of the study's methods. It's a fair critique, but I don't think it's what you're interested in measuring w.r.t. "bad" studies.)