2mo ago

"Do I have to report all data and how should I deal with outliers if there are too many?" —answer to Academia StackExchange

academia.stackexchange.com

Do I have to report all data and how should I deal with outliers if there are too many?

I strongly believe in the validity of my hypothesis (which every experimentalist does I guess), but I can't find an explanation for the outliers, or the possible explanations are too many. Can I still publish with five good data points? How should I deal with the other five? I assume it's unethical to not report them, right?

7 comments

Jfc. Thank gods my anti-intellectual "all scientists are paid lackeys of our corrupt government" family members don't see this shit. Holy hell is this an embarrassing read.

It's disturbing that an academic, presumably a PhD candidate, has to ask this. Either they're scared of the PI, or the whole department is fucked.

That was a crazy read

As it so happens, forensics experts DO say things like that in court all of the time.
- IDK about it court, but they definitely say it on forensic TV shows

Theyve edited the post, looks like they had a pretty reasonable question but wrote it badly.
- Post was edited three years ago. The answer I link to also responds to the update.
  Though it's no longer insane, I don't think the question was made reasonable by the update.

7 comments