Model Uncertainty and the Crisis in Science:

Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

CristobalYoung¹ 

关键词: model uncertainty;    multimodel analysis;    computational methods;    robustness;   

DOI  :  10.1177/2378023117737206

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Sage Journals

【 摘 要 】

The “crisis in science” today is rooted in genuine problems of model uncertainty and lack of transparency. Researchers estimate a large number of models in the course of their research but only publish a small number of preferred results. Authors have much influence on the results of an empirical study through their choices about model specification. I advance methods to quantify the influence of the author—or at least demonstrate the scope an author has to choose a preferred result. Multimodel analysis, combined with modern computational power, allows authors to present their preferred estimate alongside a distribution of estimates from many other plausible models. I demonstrate the method using new software and applied empirical examples. When evaluating research results, accounting for model uncertainty and model robustness is at least as important as statistical significance.

【 授权许可】

CC BY