Big Data and the Survival of the Scientific Method

Graphic from Wired Magazine 06.23.08 by Marian Bantjes

Five years ago, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, wrote a provocative article entitled, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete” (2008). He argued that hypothesis testing is no longer necessary with google’s petabytes of data, which provides all of the answers to how society works. Correlation now “supercedes” causation. This article generated a lot of criticism to no surprise to anyone who has taken a basic stats class. I revisit Anderson in light of the deluge of Big Data buzz with a guest post in the computational social science blog, The Bad Hessian. Read the full post here.