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No that's not P-hacking. The majority of US residents have been infected at this point. The sizes of those population groups both with and without serious pre-existing conditions are so huge that there is minimal chance of an incorrect random result.

Your link is not relevant to this issue so I don't know what point you're trying to make.

To be clear I support vaccination. But patients should make their own decisions free of coercion based on informed consent with full knowledge of the risks on both sides. Don't presume to patronize them with spurious, bad faith comments about "P-hacking". Let's see the actual data.



Right, you have a hypothesis. But you don't have data. Trying to tease out evidence for your hypothesis from existing data by slicing the data set up is the very definition of p-hacking. If you refuse to believe existing work on the basis of an unmeasured hypothesis, well, that's a different sort of logical fallacy on top of the bad statistics.

And FWIW, if you want a more complete (but much less amusing) explainer on the subject, wikipedia always comes through: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging


This is not at all correct. By your definition looking at anything in greater detail is P hacking.

For example, peanut allergies don't exist because most people don't have reactions to them. You absolutely can ask the question for if peanuts are good or bad for a subpopulation.

The alternative is just sticking your head in the sand.


The difference is in the motivations for asking the question and what's done with the answer (so agenda). People are assuming and agenda of others in this thread, and are crafting responses to head of that perceived agenda without actually answering the question, which is rarely productive, IMO. Better to ask than assume, or if the answer is known, provide it with a caveat that it doesn't actually support the specific cases you're worried it might be used for erroneously.


Wrong, I do not have a hypothesis (or any sort of preconceived notion). I am just curious to see what the data shows about risk stratification across age groups with and without common risk factors. Do you have any references to recent peer reviewed studies on that topic?

I'm not sure why you're trying to derail the discussion by bringing up data dredging. That would only potentially be relevant as a possible criticism of the methodology in a particular study. So what's your point?




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