Certainty in complex scientific research an unachievable goal
Wednesday, February 1, 2017 - 14:31
in Psychology & Sociology
A study on uncertainty in research could shed light on anomalies that arose in early attempts to discover the Higgs boson, and even how polls failed to predict the election of Donald Trump. The study suggests that research in some of the more complex scientific disciplines, such as medicine or particle physics, often doesn't eliminate uncertainties to the extent we might expect, due to a tendency to under-estimate the chance of significant abnormalities in results.