Column

  1. Love affair with statistics gives science a significant problem

    Scientists love statistical significance. It offers a way to test hypotheses. It’s a ticket to publishing, to media coverage, to tenure. It’s also a crock — statistically speaking, anyway. You know the idea. When scientists ­perform an experiment and their data suggest an important result — say, that watching TV causes ­influenza — there’s always the nagging concern that the finding […]

    By Tom Siegfried

  2. Climate’s effect on extreme weather is no game of chance

    Climate change is supposed to be about climate, you’d think — not weather. After all, climate is what you expect in the long term, like how bad the average winter will be; weather is what you get day to day, like whether there will be frost on Halloween night.