Fooling Yourself

Abstract

Clowns fool themselves. Scientists don’t. Often, the easiest way to differentiate a data clown from a data scientist is to track the successes and failures of their predictions. Clowns avoid experimentation out of fear that they’re wrong, or wait until after seeing the data before revealing what they expected to find. Scientists share their theories, question their assumptions, and seek opportunities to run experiments that will verify or contradict themselves. Most new theories are not correct and will not be supported by experiments (randomized controlled trials). Scientists are comfortable with that reality and don’t try to ram a square peg in a round hole by torturing data or mangling theories. They know that science works, but only if it’s done right.