Today, Andrew Gelman posted about a paper written over thirty years ago by Paul Meehl. Even though I believe actuaries are less exposed than social science statisticians to some of the pitfalls of what Gelman calls the “garden of forking paths,” we are still exposed, and I’d recommend reading Gelman’s posts on the issue. I plan to make time to read Meehl’s paper as well; the more we understand how our analyses can be improved, the better we all will be.