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Estimating Stasis: Can a Null Hypothesis be too Null?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2016
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In a recent contribution, Rightmire (1981) claims that “No significant trends can be observed” in several characters measured in skulls of Homo erectus. While I sympathize with the frustrating problem of small sample size in hominid finds, one must ask the question: could you ever see a trend, given the quality of your information? If sample size is low, if trends are of relatively small magnitude, and if sample variance is high, one can always safely show that nothing (i.e., stasis) has happened. This form of inference falls into a classic statistical trap: attempting to prove statistical homogeneity. You cannot do it without a concomitant estimate of least significant difference, that is, estimating the magnitude of variation within which you cannot distinguish among estimates of a parameter.
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- Evolutionary Stasis in Homo Erectus?
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