20161216_PEREZGONZALEZ_Counterargument_Fradera3.1_PUB.pdf (173.6 kB)
Sorry to say, but pilots' decisions were not irrational
Fradera’s
Digest (2016) makes
for interesting reading both for aviators and cognitive psychologists alike. Fradera reports on a research article by Walmsley and
Gilbey (2016) and the Digest seems pretty accurate to the contents commented upon (in a way, thus,
whatever praises or criticisms are raised apply
equally to the latter article). The Digest is interesting because what it says is quite
relevant in principle but rather misleading in practice. That is, the actual results reported by Walmsley and
Gilbey, do not seem to support the portrayal of pilots as biased and irrational, a portrayal which originates in the
interpretation of those results based on a flawed statistical technique—null
hypothesis significance testing, or NHST. In a nutshell, Fradera opted to summarize the interpretation of (some) outputs
made by Walmsley and Gilbey instead of re-interpreting those outputs anew within
the context of the methodology and the results described in the original
article, as I shall argue.