#51 Bernoulli’s Fallacy & the Crisis of Modern Science, with Aubrey Clayton

Learning Bayesian Statistics

You know I love epistemology — the study of how we know what we know. It was high time I dedicated a whole episode to this topic. And what better guest than Aubrey Clayton, the author of the book Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science. I’m in the middle of reading it, and it’s a really great read!

Aubrey is a mathematician in Boston who teaches the philosophy of probability and statistics at the Harvard Extension School. He holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, and his writing has appeared in Pacific Standard, Nautilus, and the Boston Globe.

We talked about what he deems “a catastrophic error in the logic of the standard statistical methods in almost all the sciences” and why this error manifests even outside of science, like in medicine, law, public policy, etc.

But don’t worry, we’re not doomed — we’ll also see where we go from there. As a big fan of E.T Jaynes, Aubrey will also tell us how this US scientist influenced his own thinking as well as the field of Bayesian inference in general.

Our theme music is « Good Bayesian », by Baba Brinkman (feat MC Lars and Mega Ran). Check out his awesome work at https://bababrinkman.com/ !

Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!

Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Brian Huey, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, Adam Bartonicek, William Benton, Alan O'Donnell, Mark Ormsby, Demetri Pananos, James Ahloy, Robin Taylor, Thomas Wiecki, Chad Scherrer, Nathaniel Neitzke, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Elea McDonnell Feit, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Joshua Duncan, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, George Ho, Colin Carroll, Nathaniel Burbank, Michael Osthege, Rémi Louf, Clive Edelsten, Henri Wallen, Hugo Botha, Vinh Nguyen, Raul Maldonado, Marcin Elantkowski, Tim Radtke, Adam C. Smith, Will Kurt, Andrew Moskowitz, Hector Munoz, Marco Gorelli, Simon Kessell, Bradley Rode, Patrick Kelley, Rick Anderson, Casper de Bruin, Philippe Labonde, Matthew McAnear, Michael Hankin, Cameron Smith, Luis Iberico, Alejandro Morales, Tomáš Frýda, Ryan Wesslen and Andreas Netti.

Visit https://www.patreon.com/learnbayesstats to unlock exclusive Bayesian swag ;)

Links from the show:

• Aubrey's website: https://aubreyclayton.com/
• Aubrey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aubreyclayton
• Bernoulli's Fallacy: https://aubreyclayton.com/bernoulli
• Aubrey's probability theory lectures based on E.T Jayne's work: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9v9IXDsJkktefQzX39wC2YG07vw7DsQ_
• What Society Gets Wrong About Statistics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDulF2MzsIU
• The Prosecutor's Fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy
• The Theory That Would Not Die -- How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10672848-the-theory-that-would-not-die
• LBS #18, How to ask good Research Questions and encourage Open Science, with Daniel Lakens: https://www.learnbayesstats.com/episode/18-how-to-ask-good-research-questions-and-encourage-open-science-with-daniel-lakens
• LBS #35, The Past, Present & Future of BRMS, with Paul Bürkner: https://www.learnbayesstats.com/episode/35-past-present-future-brms-paul-burkner
• LBS #40, Bayesian Stats for the Speech & Language Sciences, with Allison Hilger and Timo Roettger: https://www.learnbayesstats.com/episode/40-bayesian-stats-speech-language-sciences-allison-hilger-timo-roettger