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The Lounge
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"Expected Result" Bias in Research
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[QUOTE="Vanadium 50, post: 6443112, member: 110252"] This is a real effect - no skulduggery required. You work as hard as you can, find all the sources you think of, and if you get the "right" answer you pat yourself on the back for a job well done. If you get the "wrong" answer, you go back and keep looking for errors. The Particle Data Book has historical data on various measurements. One is below. You can pretty much see that (whatever else is going on) the errors are not Gaussian and random. [ATTACH type="full"]276101[/ATTACH] Now, how do we get around this? One way is by blinding. For example, in a counting experiment, one might not count in the signal region until counts in nearby control regions are demonstrated to be understood. Or one might introduce an offset unknown to the bulk of the collaboration that is removed only at the very end; again this is only done when various control checks pass. Is this perfect? Absolutely not. Science is done by people. [/QUOTE]
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"Expected Result" Bias in Research
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