I think this is the real reason people get worked up over what should be non-controversial: more rigorous designs tend to find smaller effects, confounding is difficult to account for, cruder methods shouldn’t be prioritized, etc. All of this people can understand in a vacuum but when it comes to this issue all that goes out the window.
Another great post. Thank you for writing about this.
Another superb post Sasha that captures a lot of the ideas I have from reading your previous tweets, posts, and treatise.
I stopped reading Freddie a long time ago.
I think this is the real reason people get worked up over what should be non-controversial: more rigorous designs tend to find smaller effects, confounding is difficult to account for, cruder methods shouldn’t be prioritized, etc. All of this people can understand in a vacuum but when it comes to this issue all that goes out the window.