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Do GRE scores help predict getting a physics Ph.D.? A comment on a paper by Miller et al.

A recent paper in Science Advances by Miller et al. concludes that Graduate Record Examinations (GREs) do not help predict whether physics graduate students will get Ph.D.’s. Here, I argue that the presented analyses reflect collider-like stratification bias, variance inflation by collinearity and r...

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Autor principal: Weissman, M. B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7274791/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32548252
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax3787
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author Weissman, M. B.
author_facet Weissman, M. B.
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description A recent paper in Science Advances by Miller et al. concludes that Graduate Record Examinations (GREs) do not help predict whether physics graduate students will get Ph.D.’s. Here, I argue that the presented analyses reflect collider-like stratification bias, variance inflation by collinearity and range restriction, omission of parts of a needed correlation matrix, a peculiar choice of null hypothesis on subsamples, blurring the distinction between failure to reject a null and accepting a null, and an unusual procedure that inflates the confidence intervals in a figure. Release of results of a model that leaves out stratification by the rank of the graduate program would fix many of the problems.
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spelling pubmed-72747912020-06-15 Do GRE scores help predict getting a physics Ph.D.? A comment on a paper by Miller et al. Weissman, M. B. Sci Adv Technical Comments A recent paper in Science Advances by Miller et al. concludes that Graduate Record Examinations (GREs) do not help predict whether physics graduate students will get Ph.D.’s. Here, I argue that the presented analyses reflect collider-like stratification bias, variance inflation by collinearity and range restriction, omission of parts of a needed correlation matrix, a peculiar choice of null hypothesis on subsamples, blurring the distinction between failure to reject a null and accepting a null, and an unusual procedure that inflates the confidence intervals in a figure. Release of results of a model that leaves out stratification by the rank of the graduate program would fix many of the problems. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2020-06-05 /pmc/articles/PMC7274791/ /pubmed/32548252 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax3787 Text en Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Technical Comments
Weissman, M. B.
Do GRE scores help predict getting a physics Ph.D.? A comment on a paper by Miller et al.
title Do GRE scores help predict getting a physics Ph.D.? A comment on a paper by Miller et al.
title_full Do GRE scores help predict getting a physics Ph.D.? A comment on a paper by Miller et al.
title_fullStr Do GRE scores help predict getting a physics Ph.D.? A comment on a paper by Miller et al.
title_full_unstemmed Do GRE scores help predict getting a physics Ph.D.? A comment on a paper by Miller et al.
title_short Do GRE scores help predict getting a physics Ph.D.? A comment on a paper by Miller et al.
title_sort do gre scores help predict getting a physics ph.d.? a comment on a paper by miller et al.
topic Technical Comments
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7274791/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32548252
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax3787
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