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To: grey_whiskers
95% confidence level is still (technically) not falsified...

But "95%" is an arbitrary number used because an early statistics book had a table of 5% confindence widths. (Things were done by hand then.) The "correct" confidence level is not a mathematical concept but is set by the practical consequences of making one decision or another.

14 posted on 09/19/2006 5:53:40 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch ist der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: Doctor Stochastic
But "95%" is an arbitrary number used because an early statistics book had a table of 5% confindence widths. (Things were done by hand then.) The "correct" confidence level is not a mathematical concept but is set by the practical consequences of making one decision or another.

As a practical ansatz, yes. But if something still has a 5% chance of being true, you haven't falsified it.

Secondly, if we can never tell that any other O-regions exist, then the entire concept of O-regions is "non-falsifiable" empirically.

And that gives me paws pause it what purports to be *science* which is based on systematic observation, experiment, yada yada. You know the drill.

Cheers!

17 posted on 09/19/2006 6:14:27 AM PDT by grey_whiskers
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