2017/06/23 by Ole Peters, Peters, Ole, Maximilian J. Werner +2 · 1 voice
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Data Analysis #FOS: Physical sciences #Semantic Web and Ontologies #Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an) #physics.data-an
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1706.07773
11 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2017/06/23 · openalex publication_date 2017/06/23 · arxiv updated 2017/06/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Recent studies have shown that many results published in peer-reviewed scientific journals are not reproducible. This raises the following question: why is it so easy to fool myself into believing that a result is reliable when in fact it is not? Using Brownian motion as a toy model, we show how this can happen if ergodicity is assumed where it is unwarranted. A measured value can appear stable when judged over time, although it is not stable across the ensemble: a different result will be obtained each time the experiment is run.