Quote Originally Posted by Savy View Post
Rather than being a dick I mean this quite genuinely even though I'm sure you'll take offence to it. Maybe try thinking about what you should say or do that makes a difference to this happening. That isn't stupidity t's laziness & bad practise. None of which are signs of not being able to do Math. Now I'm sure these people probably don't understand the maths well enough to have a real concept of what it is they are doing wrong and why it's so bad but this is never going to be the case especially when applying stats to non-mathematical fields.

If you want to change this (which you have said you do) then you kind of need to take responsibility for this.

Correcting people is a really shit way of fixing their habits, especially when there are thousands of people doing the same thing.
I think your argument is genuine and makes a good point.

to the first bolded: I think it's unclear which it is. They can defend themselves equally well either way. They can say e.g., yes we understand but that's how it's always been done' whether they don't understand or do understand and don't give a shit. So their counter is ambiguous.

The second bolded bit is really the crux of the matter. Without going into detail, their analysis is based on the presumption that people can react to something they see by pressing a button within 1/10 of a second. Anyone who knows the basic time frame of stimulus-->neurons --> muscles knows that's (fucking) impossible. So my view is not that they're incapable of seeing this, but that they find it easier/better/whatever to base their analysis of the data on the idea that it is possible, for reasons known only to themselves, on an assumption that is silly.

third bold: In this case, I am not the one who ultimately decides if a paper gets published. So my responsibility is to tell the editor this is bullshit or this is reasonably solid. After that it's on them.

last bold: that's a perfectly good point, but reaching a wider audience isn't possible when reviewing a single paper. That requires a more general treatise of a much broader subject which both you and my colleagues agree needs to be presented to a general audience. I am one of those presenting such a treatise but nonetheless I can only deal with this specific example of foolishness in its own context at this specific time.