Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35969359›Full record

ReviewPsychonomic bulletin & review2023

A Bayesian perspective on severity: risky predictions and specific hypotheses.

Noah van Dongen, Jan Sprenger, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

Abstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Is Ockham's razor losing its edge? New perspectives on the principle of model parsimony.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Review
  3. Review
  4. On the scope of scientific hypotheses.Royal Society open science · 2023
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Noah van DongenUniversity of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands. nnnvandongen@gmail.com.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0387-7388
Jan SprengerUniversity of Turin, Turin, Italy.
Eric-Jan WagenmakersUniversity of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

A tradition that goes back to Sir Karl R. Popper assesses the value of a statistical test primarily by its severity: was there an honest and stringent attempt to prove the tested hypothesis wrong? For "error statisticians" such as Mayo (1996, 2018), and frequentists more generally, severity is a key virtue in hypothesis tests. Conversely, failure to incorporate severity into statistical inference, as allegedly happens in Bayesian inference, counts as a major methodological shortcoming. Our paper pursues a double goal: First, we argue that the error-statistical explication of severity has substantive drawbacks; specifically, the neglect of research context and the specificity of the predictions of the hypothesis. Second, we argue that severity matters for Bayesian inference via the value of specific, risky predictions: severity boosts the expected evidential value of a Bayesian hypothesis test. We illustrate severity-based reasoning in Bayesian statistics by means of a practical example and discuss its advantages and potential drawbacks.

Indexed as

Bayes TheoremHumansBayes factorsDeborah MayoError statisticsKarl PopperNull hypothesis significance testingSeverityStatistical test

Identifiers

PMID35969359
PMCPMC10104935

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.