Bernoulli's Fallacy

There is a logical flaw in the statistical methods used across experimental science.This fault is not a minor academic quibble: it underlies a reproducibility crisis now threatening entire disciplines.In an increasingly statistics-reliant society, this same deeply rooted error shapes decisions in medicine, law, and public policy with profound consequences.The foundation of the problem is a misunderstanding of probability and its role in making inferences from observations. Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the seventeenth-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics.Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it.He highlights how influential nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures developed a statistical methodology they claim