Reification: “The data speak for themselves” only if we confuse mathematics with reality
[This is the English translation of an article originally published on SIAF Community, the Italian scientific platform for forensic and insurance medicine] Suppose we flip a coin and ask what the probability of getting heads is. Our experience and what we learned in school suggest that the answer is 50%, since there is one “favorable” case (heads) out of two possible outcomes (heads or tails). This is a very common form of reification : confusing a theoretical abstraction - in this case, the probabilistic model that assigns a 50% chance to heads - with an empirical property of the real world, as if that 50% were an intrinsic characteristic of the coin or of the physical act of flipping it. Contrary to what one might think, this almost automatic answer already assumes a very specific statistical model, based on at least two main assumptions about the process that generates the outcomes (where an outcome is obtaining 'heads' or 'tails'). Assumption of the competent man...