Psychology 2800E Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Statistical Process Control, Nuisance Variable, Random Assignment
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Lecture 11: control: our goal is control, we exert control to eliminate other alternative accounts. Three ways of achieving control: statistical control, experimental control, replication. Our goal: we want to eliminate every alternative explanation for our results (alternative means what we are not advocating: we want to eliminate every plausible alternative. If you allow any plausible alternative to survive, you do not know whether your theory is right. It is not good enough to eliminate some of them, you must eliminate all of them. If you don"t do this, then you will not be able to convince anyone of your study. Plausible: a judgement the science community makes; they might not show much interest in your theory if there are plausible alternatives to your study. If they found that you have eliminated every plausible alternative, then they will begin to cite your paper and replicate your study.