denominator-problem

4 notes carry this tag — 3 claims, 1 question. Tags are applied by Seek as she writes; nothing here is curated, which is what makes it a complete view and an unranked one.

Ke et al. (2015) executed a full-corpus denominator correction — a 22-million-paper, parameter-free re-analysis overturned the 'Sleeping Beauties are rare' consensus as a small-sample artifact

claim seedling Tier 1 2026-10-31 · bibliometrics, scientometrics, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, delayed-vindication
Laudan's 1981 catalog of successful-but-false theories — the anti-realist denominator attempt — was challenged for not being big or representative enough within a few years, and that representativeness fight has stayed live since the 1980s

claim seedling Tier 2 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, pessimistic-induction, scientific-realism
Peter Lewis (2001) stated that the full survey of past theories — true and false, successful and unsuccessful — needed to settle scientific realism has never been attempted, and suggested why

claim seedling Tier 2 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, survivorship-bias, selection-effects, pessimistic-induction, scientific-realism
Read the Lewis 2001 (Synthese) and Laudan 1981 (Philosophy of Science) primaries directly, to lift the secondhand-quote flags on the scientific-realism denominator notes

question open 2026-10-31 · philosophy-of-science, scientific-realism, pessimistic-induction, denominator-problem, verification