Realism for shopkeepers

behaviouralist notes on constructive empiricism

John M. Nicholas

pp. 459-476

in: James BROWN, Jürgen Mittelstrass (eds), An intimate relation, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

In his Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference, R. A. Fisher (1956) complained that (then) recent accounts of the rationale of tests of significance attempted to assimilate them to a quite different model from that intended by the originators. The founders of the test, actively committed to research in the natural sciences and attempting to employ the tests to improve their comprehension of experimental material, had as their goal "improved scientific understanding". The new rationale for significance tests was that of the "acceptance procedure", involving sampling of materials from industrial consignments, with a view to reducing the rate of acceptance — in a physical and commercial sense — of faulty goods, in an economically efficient way without unduly rejecting satisfactory ones.