Abstract

FARJI-BRENER, Alejandro G. Ecologists or egologists? When the ideas enslave the data. Ecol. austral [online]. 2009, vol.19, n.2, pp.167-172. ISSN 1667-782X.

Some ecologists feel in love with its ideas and, as a result, they tend to manipulate the information to artificially improve the fit between results and predictions. In this work I describe certain characteristics of this researchers (denominated egologist because they suffer the rejection of its ideas as a defeat of its ego), and detail how they enslave the data by their ideas. The manipulation of outliers' data and statistical inquisition (to torture the data until they confess) are some of the more frequent procedures. To better understand how nature works we, as ecologists, should be enslaved by the data and not by the hypotheses that guided their collection.

Keywords : Experimental design; Academic ego; Statistical manipulation.

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