An addition to the model-makers’ oath

Yesterday Aleks posted a proposal for a model makers’ Hippocratic Oath. I’d like to add two more items:

1. From Mark Palko: “Our model only describes the data we used to build it; if you go outside of that range, you do so at your own risk.”

2. In case you like to think of your methods as nonparametric or non-model-based: “Our method, just like any model, relies on assumptions which we have the duty to state and to check.”

(Observant readers will see that I use “we” rather than “I” in these two items. Modeling is an inherently collaborative endeavor.

2 thoughts on “An addition to the model-makers’ oath

  1. Does anyone actually lives up to that oath?
    Would the debate on evolution run better if teaches would tell the students that professional scientific models of evolution often use the molecular clock hypothesis that isn't realistic?

    No scientific discipline is really open to laypeople about their buried bodies.

    How about:
    If you teach a class on statistics make sure that nobody, who believes that a low p-value automatically means that the model is true, will receive a passing grade?

  2. ChristianK:

    1. I live up to the above oath. And I try to be open about the "buried bodies" (as you put it) in statistics and political science.

    2. A low p-value is evidence of a failure of the model, certainly not evidence that the model is true. I teach my students that none of our models are true. But my course has lots of stuff in it; I don't think it makes sense to give a student an F just because he or she has an incomplete understanding.

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