Author: Brand Hu

A friend claims to be psychic and correctly calls five coin tosses in a row. If he were only guessing, this would happen 1 in 32 times (3.1%). Since this fall under the typical p < 0.05 threshold, the result is “significant”, but would anyone believe he possesses psychic abilities? If he tried to convince…

The typical spiders wait in webs, but jumping spiders hunt on foot (Garrison et al. 2016). One tempting explanation is that webs are costly, so shedding them must be an upgrade (Schmitz 2004, 2005). But a plausible story remains only a hypothesis; science consists of constant questioning and testing. Upon a closer look, abandoning web…