>[!abstract] >The garden of forking paths is a problem in frequentist hypothesis testing through which researchers can unintentionally produce false positives for a tested hypothesis, through leaving themselves too many degrees of freedom. In contrast to fishing expeditions such as data dredging where only expected or apparently-significant results are published, this allows for a similar effect even when only one experiment is run, through a series of choices about how to implement methods and analyses, which are themselves informed by the data as it is observed and processed (Wikipedia, 2025). >[!related] >- **North** (upstream): — >- **West** (similar): — >- **East** (different): [[Data dredging]] >- **South** (downstream): —