The Demise of Scientific American
I saw only this quote on Twitter the other day<p>&gt; The so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against.<p>Which was, frankly, shocking to see coming from Scientific American, something I had assumed was a respectable scholarly publication, if not an actual academic journal, per se. It&#x27;s an absolutely mind-boggling mistake to publish in something that claims itself to be about science. That is not at all what a normal distribution is, and the normal distribution makes no such assumption. Anyone who passed a basic Intro to Statistics course should be able to explain why this is wrong.<p>To open with such a profoundly wrong assertion, and then publish an article built on this flawed assumption just beggars belief. I feel like I&#x27;ve wandered into some kind of Twilight Zone that there are apparently serious people, charged with informing the public about science, who are publishing <i>obvious</i> falsehoods and expecting us to go along with them.<p>I cannot understand how an editor of a scientific publication read that sentence and did not immediately send the piece back to the author with a note reading &quot;No thank you. You clearly have no idea what you&#x27;re talking about&quot;.