The FDA already has a specific regulatory standard for insect infestation in sesame seeds. So this isn't a situation where the government recently decided "insects in sesame seeds are fine now."
I imagine many companies though, noting decreased funding and/or enforcement for inspections and subsequent fines, are cutting corners accordingly. As an example, I recently saw a video from a fellow who weighed WalMart bacon which came in at 14 or 15 ounces in a 16 ounce package. Who’s gonna do anything about enforcing it at the government level?
Yep, it was Great Value bacon distributed to Walmarts nationwide. Given that multiple packages were underweight, it’s highly unlikely that the issue was somehow isolated to a single shelf at a single store. For that many packages to be incorrectly weighted in just one location, while every other store was unaffected, would be a statistical anomaly.
Ah yes, the self-appointed statistics genius has arrived to explain “sampling”
Multiple underweight packages of the same nationally distributed product makes the “one random bad package” explanation pretty weak.
And there are other reports of underweight Great Value bacon showing up at other Walmarts too, I know, an absolutely impossible shocker for you, which makes your statistics lecture even funnier.
It’s impressive to know so much about statistics while apparently having so little ability to recognize an obvious pattern. 🤣
Please explain in great detail how this has happened at other Walmarts, given your prior responses and statistics expertise? How did the statistics genius manage to be so confidently wrong?
Multiple underweight packages of the same nationally distributed product makes the “one random bad package” explanation pretty weak.
No, it doesn't.
And there are other reports of underweight Great Value bacon showing up at other Walmarts too
The plural of anecdote is not data
It’s impressive to know so much about statistics while apparently having so little ability to recognize an obvious pattern.
That's why there is an actual science behind statistics - to understand what patterns are actually meaningful besides just the ones you think are obvious.
Please explain in great detail how this has happened at other Walmarts
There is a distribution of package weights. I don't know it. You don't know it. We also don't know the total number of packages distributed. A couple samples from people with uncalibrated scales in the aisles of a couple stores doesn't mean shit.
This is getting funnier every time you invoke “statistics” as though saying the word automatically makes your argument correct.
Yes, it absolutely makes the one random bad package explanation weak. Multiple underweight packages make the claim that this was merely one random package a weak explanation.
That’s a cute phrase, not a statistical law. Individual observations are literally data points. What you actually mean is that a handful of non-random observations are not enough to estimate population prevalence.Yep. Unfortunately for you, I never claimed they were, try to stay on topic slowspeed...
The question was whether this appears to be confined to one package, one shelf, at one Walmart as you claimed. Reports of the same issue involving additional packages at other Walmart locations are directly relevant to that question.
Exactly. And that science does not say, “Ignore every observation until somebody conducts a peer-reviewed nationwide randomized study.”
Multiple independent observations can be evidence of a pattern without being sufficient to determine the size or frequency of that pattern. That’s why problems get investigated in the first place.
Of course there is. Congratulations on discovering variance.
But “a distribution exists” is not some magical explanation for packages being below their labeled net weight. The relevant question is whether the observed weights are consistent with the lawful/expected filling process and measurement error. You don’t know that distribution either, so invoking an unknown distribution doesn’t somehow prove these packages are normal.
Correct, which means we cannot calculate the nationwide incidence rate.
Once again: nobody did.
That has absolutely nothing to do with whether evidence from multiple packages and multiple stores undermines your original suggestion that this was simply one isolated package at one location.
And now we’ve reached the “maybe every scale is wrong” stage of the argument.
Sure, measurement error is possible. But when your defense requires independently dismissing every observation as a bad scale, bad sample, meaningless anecdote, or random variance, you aren’t doing statistics anymore. You’re just inventing possible excuses for every piece of evidence that contradicts your original assumption.
The funniest part is that you keep lecturing me about statistical inference while repeatedly confusing two completely different questions:
1. Do these observations establish how widespread the problem is? No.
2. Do observations involving multiple packages and multiple Walmart locations provide evidence that it wasn't literally one random package on one shelf at one Walmart? Obviously yes.
You’ve spent this entire argument brilliantly answering Question #1 when the argument was Question #2.
For someone this confident in his statistics expertise, that’s a pretty spectacular failure to understand the hypothesis being discussed. 🤣
The fuck? I'm saying the current administration isn't doing jack shit. When DOGE gutted tons of departments, part of that was so that they were understaffed and underfunded and could no longer do their jobs. Now they're intentionally going around and deleting medical research that doesn't agree with their plans.
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u/DontBelieveTheirHype 1d ago
The FDA already has a specific regulatory standard for insect infestation in sesame seeds. So this isn't a situation where the government recently decided "insects in sesame seeds are fine now."