good summary gelman philosophy of Bayesian statistics

Bayesian statistical pragmatism

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2011/04/bayesian_statis_1.html

Thank you for writing this.  This is the clearest and quite comprehensive (even though short and to the point) support for your philosophical views, and I am inclined to agree on all counts.

I read Gelman and Shalizi 2010, and enjoyed it a lot, what my novice brain could understand.  But the summary above hits and handles all the difficulties, and is easy to read.

I would recommend people read Gelman and Shalizi 2010 "Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics" [ http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/philosophy.pdf ] for the section on Mayo's "severe" testing of models, Section 4 "Model checking" - the only lack of the summary above that I can see.