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Comment by austinjp | Hacker News Reader

I think you're somewhat misinterpreting his point. He's not saying "I'm correct whether you like it or not". Instead, he's saying "we are all prone to cognitive errors, whether you like it or not".

Admittedly, the experiments he conducted and cited were found to be flawed. But I think his point, as I understand it, still stands.

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It sounds like he's saying his students were wrong to express disbelief over the counter intuitive findings of a study because the statistics were such that it left no option but to accept the results. Which is arrogant and wrong. Studies can be faulty or fail to replicate, statistics can be misapplied or fudged, future studies also contradict prior findings, etc.

Blind faith in the results of a study is not good science. If a study is counter intuitive, one should question it.

The point doesn't stand, at least, not for psychology papers: even if the data have been collected correctly, the method was flawless, and the statistics have been done properly, the conclusions (as written in the paper under "Conclusions" heading) are always beyond the scope of the experiment, often far beyond it. I've never seen a psych paper that limits itself to just the experiment. They always present the outcome as proof for some kind of broader theory (which usually has been proven wrong in the same style by somebody else).

it almost seems even more relevant given the outcome of his experiments...

> He's not saying "I'm correct whether you like it or not". Instead, he's saying "we are all prone to cognitive errors, whether you like it or not".

Restated: "I'm correct, about us all being prone to cognitive errors, where you like it or not."

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