Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Circular analysis

Circular analysis

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Contested PROD: "Appears to be a neologism used in this sense only by Kriegeskorte and his collaborators to describe a longstanding habit in scientific malpractice." Illia Connell (talk) 17:26, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep. The term seems to be in use in sufficiently wide scholarly circles. Kriegskorte's use of the term is discussed here, for example, and a number of journal articles. Deltahedron (talk) 18:04, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The concept is a form of circular reasoning or begging the question, which has been common in this field, as discussed in Foundational Issues of Human Brain Mapping. Kriegeskorte's presentation of the issue seems influential, e.g. "Kriegeskorte and their colleagues deserve unending commendation...". Warden (talk) 21:17, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. It is unclear whether this topic is similar enough to any other articles to be merged into. This [review] highlights the topic's importance and suggests it may be a version of selection bias, but it is unclear whether that article uses the term in the same way. 81.98.35.149 (talk) 21:24, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:35, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as original prodder; I've taken a look at such references included above as I can, and I find nothing to indicate the phrase is in wide useage. Certainly the concept is significant (and well understood to anybody who's ever observed a freshman lab at work) - I would not oppose a merge to something like Selection bias, but this does seem to have a different twist than the standard bias, and so may not be a good merge target. Ray^Talk 02:13, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The combination of "the concept is significant" and "does seem to have a different twist" sounds like an argument for a separate article? Deltahedron (talk) 08:16, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm more concerned that this is a very old concept, certainly older than Kriegskorte's papers, and I've only seen it called "circular analysis" in recent years. Back in school, we called it "adjusting the data to fit the model." Ray^Talk 18:36, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Google scholar gives 563 citations for the nature paper[1]. Highly infulential. Also happy with a merge.--Salix (talk): 07:41, 1 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Merge with Testing hypotheses suggested by the data, leaving a disambiguation page that also points to Directional statistics. Devoting an article to a new term for an old concept would give it undue weight. Statisticians have been thinking about these issues for ages - see Exploratory data analysis, Data dredging, Post-hoc analysis and Multiple comparisons. Judging by searches on Google Scholar, both "circular inference" and "double dipping" were first used in 2007 (Baker, C. I., et al. "Circular inference in neuroscience: The dangers of double dipping." annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA. 2007). Before that, "circular inference" mainly applied to analysis of directional data - hence the need for a disambiguation page. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:39, 3 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]