Touring the Bases with….Craig Wright | Seamheads.com

Primate Kevin Johnson interviewed Craig Wright a little over a year ago. I missed the article then but, with all the Moneyball movie talk around here, it’s very relevant to the ongoing discussion.

Statistical analysis has very real role in most scientific inquiry, but it is quite possible to focus on statistical analysis without taking advantage of what makes scientific inquiry so effective. Left to stand alone, statistical analysis tends to limit truth and understanding only to certainties that can be expressed in its language. Science is geared to work more productively with uncertainty, and truth and understanding can be pursued, comprehended, and used in ways that are not dependent on the language of statistical application.

Analysis of any kind is a tricky business and its heavy practitioners, particularly those with a statistical bent, tend to lose sight of its weaknesses and let their allegiance to the method blind them to what they can learn or know outside of that small circle. Statistical analysis can easily become a trap that costs us the humility that should come from the cold hard truth that reality is so complex that it is remarkably easy to lose grasp of reality while in the midst of analysis.