Understanding Research

[adidash]

Ive been given a formative assessment to read a journal and then answer questions. Most of the questions i have managed to answer but a couple im a little unsure on.
The journal is : a web questionnaire to determine the advice general practitioners give on probiotics.

The question i am struggling with is:

Has the author unjustifiably generalized findings, when there is only a limited interpretation.

could someone please explain what is meant by this or rephrase the sentence for me?

Thanks

[AlwaysConfused]

Has the author made his conclusions before knowing the full facts

[Old_Geezer]

That's pretty much how I'd understand it too.

Has the author stated conclusions (findings) but failed to justify how they reached those conclusions ?

Have they failed to consider and discuss other plausible conclusions ?

[adidash]

Thank you both you've been a big help, that makes sense now.

The other question im not sure about it is:

Have confidence intervals been calculated and do the authors conclusions reflect them? - what are confidence interv

[Clanad]

As to your last question; this describes the statistical tool of establishing a confidence interval and determining the efficacy of a sampling method:

http://stattrek.com/estimation/confidence-interval.aspx

There are sources online for confidence interval calculators to help one resolve the uncertainty of the conclusions of the sampling method employed.

[Peter Pedant]

// Has the author unjustifiably generalized findings, when there is only a limited interpretation. //

Suppose the author has observed that all his subjects have blue eyes.

The acceptable conclusion is that some humans have blue eyes
he cannot from a sample conclude that all humans are blue eyed

Confidence interval
suppoe you have a sample average of 36.... with a confidence interval of 20-55 then the confidence interval allows you to conclude that there is a 95% chance the population average ( whatever it is ) lies between 20 and 55