Related papers: Probably a discovery: Bad mathematics means rough …
Particle physics experiments such as those run in the Large Hadron Collider result in huge quantities of data, which are boiled down to a few numbers from which it is hoped that a signal will be detected. We discuss a simple probability…
The Fermi paradox is the conflict between an expectation of a high {\em ex ante} probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe and the apparently lifeless universe we in fact observe. The expectation that the universe should be…
Where is everybody? This phrase distills the foreboding of what has come to be known as the Fermi Paradox - the disquieting idea that, if extraterrestrial life is probable in the Universe, then why have we not encountered it? This conundrum…
The following proposition is justified from several different points of view. If you use P = 0.05 to suggest that you have made a discovery, you will be wrong at least 30 percent of the time. If, as is often the case, experiments are…
Over one year ago, a very long preprint posted on arXiv [arXiv:1709.03771] and HAL announced a proof of Lehmer's Conjecture (and of other related results). Unfortunately, as was remarked by several specialists, this proof contains a (at…
Serendipity plays an important role in scientific discovery. Indeed, many of the most important breakthroughs, ranging from penicillin to the electric battery, have been made by scientists who were stimulated by a chance exposure to…
Some risks have extremely high stakes. For example, a worldwide pandemic or asteroid impact could potentially kill more than a billion people. Comfortingly, scientific calculations often put very low probabilities on the occurrence of such…
We stand at the foot of a significant inflection in the trajectory of scientific discovery. As society continues on its fast-paced digital transformation, so does humankind's collective scientific knowledge and discourse. We now read and…
In research policy, effective measures that lead to improvements in the generation of knowledge must be based on reliable methods of research assessment, but for many countries and institutions this is not the case. Publication and citation…
It appears paradoxical that science is producing outstanding new results and theories at a rapid rate at the same time that researchers are identifying serious problems in the practice of science that cause many reports to be irreproducible…
In 1988, in cooperation with a team of experimental physicists, a Condensed Matter theorist, X, published in Physical Review Letters a crucial experimental result dealing with a revolutionary new theory. The conclusions of the paper were…
The spread of fake news has emerged as a critical challenge, undermining trust and posing threats to society. In the era of Large Language Models (LLMs), the capability to generate believable fake content has intensified these concerns. In…
The fermi paradox uses an appeal to the mediocrity principle to make it seem counter-intuitive that humanity has not been contacted by extraterrestrial intelligence. A numerical, statistical analysis was conducted to determine whether this…
The recent proliferation of "fake news" has triggered a number of responses, most notably the emergence of several manual fact-checking initiatives. As a result and over time, a large number of fact-checked claims have been accumulated,…
This paper shows how p-values do not only create, as well known, wrong expectations in the case of flukes, but they might also dramatically diminish the `significance' of most likely genuine signals. As real life examples, the 2015 first…
I think we can agree that dealing with uncertainty is not easy. Probability is the main tool for dealing with uncertainty, and we know there are many probability-related puzzles and paradoxes. Here I describe a rather idiosyncratic…
We present the recent results of top-quark physics using up to 6 fb$^{-1}$ of $p\bar{p}$ collisions analyzed by the CDF collaboration. The large number of top quark events analyzed, of the order of several thousands, allows stringent checks…
Many scientists have expressed concerns about potential catastrophic risks associated with new technologies. But expressing concern is one thing, identifying serious candidates another. Such risks are likely to be novel, rare, and difficult…
Philosophers now seem to agree that frequentism is an untenable strategy to explain the meaning of probabilities. Nevertheless, I want to revive frequentism, and I will do so by grounding probabilities on typicality in the same way as the…
In classical physics, probabilistic or statistical knowledge has been always related to ignorance or inaccurate subjective knowledge about an actual state of affairs. This idea has been extended to quantum mechanics through a completely…