Statistics against irritations: a response to Dickens's apologists

TL;DR

This paper defends previous statistical findings that people cannot reliably distinguish Dickens's prose from Bulwer-Lytton's, despite claims of criticism, emphasizing the robustness of the original test results.

Contribution

It provides a rebuttal to criticisms of the original statistical test showing that prose recognition by readers is no better than chance.

Findings

Test-takers performed at chance level in distinguishing Dickens from Bulwer-Lytton.

Criticism of the original test is refuted with statistical evidence.

The original results are robust against the criticisms received.

Abstract

In a recent article (arXiv:0909.2479) I reported the results of the test, where the takers had to tell the prose of Charles Dickens from the prose of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The former is a required reading in school, and the latter has a bad writing contest named after him. Nevertheless, the test-takers performed on the level of random guessing. This research has met much criticism, which I refute the in the present article.