• Question: You know when you collect data... How do you make sure it's reliable?

    Asked by megann9 to Nicolas on 21 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Nicolas Biber

      Nicolas Biber answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Hey megann 🙂

      A really good question and a lesson I had to learn, all scientists had to learn at some point. You don’t just collect data at random, you need some kind of a system that you have reasons to believe that your data will be reliable. This is when you have to do literature research. You have to see what other people did before you and if their data were reliable. Then you base your method on theirs, because then you can also refer to their research when someone asks you why you believe that your data is reliable. Once you have your data, there is a number of statistic tests you have to run on them, I will not go into more detail about this, sometimes it’s a bit of a nightmare, but it’s great when it tells you that you have actually discovered an effect 😉
      The reliability of your data makes the difference between science and people just telling stuff they’re not really sure about.

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