The Statistician Cannot Evade The Responsibility For

Inductive Inference Is The Only Process Known To Us By Which Essentially New Knowledge Comes Into The World.

[coining Phrase "null Hypothesis"] In Relation To Any Experiment We May Speak Of This Hypothesis As The "null Hypothesis," And It Should Be Noted That The Null Hypothesis Is Never Proved Or Established, But Is Possibly Disproved, In The Course Of Experimentation. Every Experiment May Be Said To Exist Only In Order To Give The Facts A Chance Of Disproving The Null Hypothesis.

The Neutral Zone Of Selective Advantage In The Neighbourhood Of Zero Is Thus So Narrow That Changes In The Environment, And In The Genetic Constitution Of Species, Must Cause This Zone To Be Crossed And Perhaps Recrossed Relatively Rapidly In The Course Of Evolutionary Change, So That Many Possible Gene Substitutions May Have A Fluctuating History Of Advance And Regression Before The Final Balance Of Selective Advantage Is Determined.

To Consult The Statistician After An Experiment Is Finished Is Often Merely To Ask Him To Conduct A Post Mortem Examination. He Can Perhaps Say What The Experiment Died Of.

However, Perhaps The Main Point Is That You Are Under No Obligation To Analyse Variance Into Its Parts If It Does Not Come Apart Easily, And Its Unwillingness To Do So Naturally Indicates That One's Line Of Approach Is Not Very Fruitful.