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The systematic errors enter the sigma calculation, doesn’t it?


Are you asking are systematic errors "priced-in"/"automatically represented" or are they hidden inside the sigma calculation?

Systematic errors can easily remain hidden. The faster-than-light neutrino had 6-sigma confidence[0], but 4 other labs couldn't reproduce the results. In the end it was attributed to fiber optic timing errors.

So if you don't know you have a system error, then you can very easily get great confidence in fundamentally flawed results.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino#Superluminal_neutrino...


No. As written in another comment, imagine trying to determine whether two brands of cake mixes have the same density by weighing them. If you always weigh one of the brands with a glass bowl, but the other one with a steel bowl, you'll get enormously high units of sigma, but in reality you've only proven that steel is heavier than glass.


Cannot, because here we’re talking about “unknown unknowns”.




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