Related papers: The fallacy of evidence based policy
Beginning with a simple semantics for propositions, based on counting observations, it is shown that probabilistic and fuzzy logic correspond to two different heuristic assumptions regarding the combination of propositions whose evidence…
There are two reasons why uncertainty may not be adequately described by Probability Theory. The first one is due to unique or nearly-unique events, that either never realized or occurred too seldom for frequencies to be reliably measured.…
Adopting the scientific method a theoretical model is proposed as foundation for information science and technology, extending the existing theory of signaling: a fact f becomes known in a physical system only following the success of a…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…
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…
Statistics experiences a storm around the perceived misuse and possible abuse of its methods in the context of the so-called reproducibility crisis. The methods and styles of quantification practiced in mathematical modelling rarely make it…
This paper presents some ideas and results of using uncertainty management methods in the presence of data in preference to other statistical and machine learning methods. A medical domain is used as a test-bed with data available from a…
Most scientific disciplines use significance testing to draw conclusions about experimental or observational data. This classical approach provides a theoretical guarantee for controlling the number of false positives across a set of…
With the recent wave of digitalization, specifically in the context of safety-critical applications, there has been a growing need for computationally efficient, accurate, generalizable, and trustworthy models. Physics-based models have…
Uncertainty can be classified as either aleatoric (intrinsic randomness) or epistemic (imperfect knowledge of parameters). The majority of frameworks assessing infectious disease risk consider only epistemic uncertainty. We only ever…
We discuss models and data of crowd disasters, crime, terrorism, war and disease spreading to show that conventional recipes, such as deterrence strategies, are often not effective and sufficient to contain them. Many common approaches do…
The process of discovery in the physical, biological and medical sciences can be painstakingly slow. Most experiments fail, and the time from initiation of research until a new advance reaches commercial production can span 20 years. This…
Confidence is an essential ingredient of success in a wide range of domains ranging from job performance and mental health, to sports, business, and combat. Some authors have suggested that not just confidence but overconfidence-believing…
In the popular imagination, science and technology are often seen as fields of knowledge production critical to social progress and a cooperative future. This optimistic portrayal of technological advancement also features prominently in…
Causality is a fundamental part of the scientific endeavour to understand the world. Unfortunately, causality is still taboo in much of psychology and social science. Motivated by a growing number of recommendations for the importance of…
Forecasting has always been at the forefront of decision making and planning. The uncertainty that surrounds the future is both exciting and challenging, with individuals and organisations seeking to minimise risks and maximise utilities.…
Politics is the set of activities related to strategic decision-making in groups. Political scientists study the strategic interactions between states, institutions, politicians, and citizens; they seek to understand the causes and…
The last decade witnessed an explosion in the availability of data for operations research applications. Motivated by this growing availability, we propose a novel schema for utilizing data to design uncertainty sets for robust optimization…
The dynamics of political opinion are a critical component of modern society with large-scale implications for the evolution of intra- and international political discourse and policy. Here we utilize recent high-resolution survey data to…
Social epistemologists have argued that high risk, high reward science has an important role to play in scientific communities. Recently, though, it has also been argued that various scientific fields seem to be trending towards…