There's an infinite number of needles, because there's all these correlations that can look significant in a data set of large size. They're not replicable, they're not going to replicate it. So statistical significance has very little discriminating ability to tell you which ones are the real needles and which are just looks. That summarizes my worry about big data. What do you think about it?
John Ioannidis of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his research on the reliability of published research findings. They discuss Ioannidis's recent study on bias in economics research, meta-analysis, the challenge of small sample analysis, and the reliability of statistical significance as a measure of success in empirical research.